


The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

by maevestrom



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Abusive Parents, Air Force, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clumsiness, Coping, F/F, Memory Loss, Memory Related, Military, Military Academy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reading, School, book nerds, note taking, verbal tics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2020-12-27 05:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21113291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maevestrom/pseuds/maevestrom
Summary: Robin's had a bad memory ever since the accident. She can't retain things as well as she wants and waits for the day that things will get better. All she knows right now is that Sumia is one thing that she can't let herself forget. And as time passes between then in now, she won't.





	1. "I-It IS Robin, Right?"

**Author's Note:**

> This work came to me very suddenly when I wanted to write but did not really have anything in mind TO write. I think as of late I have discovered more of an interest in memory, especially as I sort through my own retention. I try and base it off of my own experiences, though most of the time they are not quite so severe. Memory can be used in cheap manners in writing, but there is so much intrigue in the concept that I cannot ignore.

Robin wakes up and thinks of the name  _ Sumia.  _

It’s a familiar name. It’s meant something to her for awhile. Still, she can’t really piece together her face. It was lovely, she had tan skin that never was lighter or darker, and she’s pretty sure Sumia had grey hair even though she wasn’t older than Robin- close, but that’s it. That’s really all she has as far as her appearance, and she can only grasp fuzzy memories as to how they met. Somewhere at the academy, probably. 

All that Robin knew for sure was this fuzzy warmth in her chest as she thought about Sumia. 

That wasn’t much to go off, but it was enough.

\---

_ The instructor was someone Robin knew very well. _

_ Everything except his name, in fact- though she would see it in e-mails and the class syllabus, it never stayed with her. Shame on her mind to pull a reverse-Sumia.  _

_ The instructor was stern and strict. Early on in the term, before Robin swallowed her pride, he never adjusted deadlines or gave anyone mercy. “This is war,” Robin recalled him saying because some things just stuck with her. “In war, there’s no room for even the slightest error.”  _

_ Robin sometimes wondered on the days where that sentence replayed if he was sympathetic to his students. If he secretly wanted none of them to die. Chrom seemed to recall him as “seriously strict” but still respected him nonetheless, enough to get him a job teaching at the academy after working privately for Chrom’s family. _

_ The other thing about the instructor was that he was very understanding. Robin never talked in-depth about her condition until her grades were so miserable that she knew she either had to swallow her pride or flunk so badly they’d throw her out even if they didn’t know. _

_ When she confesses, the instructor says “Robin, I wish you had told me sooner.” _

_ The two work some things out. Extra time in exams, looser deadlines, and plans to check her notes to make sure they covered everything; if not, he would re-teach her himself. Robin makes sure to write everything he says down like the notes she tried to take during classes, a smile on her face. It seems like he really is dedicated to sending out the sharpest students into the battlefield.  _

_ During one point where the conversation drops, he looks Robin square in the eye. Robin faces him without fear. “Is this mental condition… permanent?” _

_ Robin has to think for a second and consult her phone. The instructor waits for her to finish patiently. She thanks him twice, which he hmms at. Then, she tells him “It shouldn’t be. But they toss me around so much. Some of my doctors work to cure it and tell me that it will pass in time. Or reduce it so it isn’t so much. Some of my doctors try to get me adjusted to life with this. And it’s so slow, and I don’t really know what’s right.” _

_ She doesn’t let on how sad it makes her anymore. _

_ The instructor taps a pen on his desk. Robin reads it like an ellipsis. She’s right. “You do realize, Ms. Khalil, that your future in the military does depend on your recovery, correct?” _

_ Robin closes her eyes. She nods. “That’s why it was so hard to tell you. I didn’t want to lose…” She gestures around her.  _

_ The instructor nods. “That is very understandable. Needless to say, however, I am concerned. In this state, you would not pass a wellness check for a true battlefield. I know the cost of continuing at the academy can be high, so I am honestly unsure of what causes you to stay with us knowing the chance persists that you cannot graduate into our military.” _

_ Robin’s eyes stay closed, her breaths forcibly deep until she feels in her uniform pocket for something she always has on her, so she never forgets. She finds it and hands it to the instructor.  _

_ The instructor breathes a little sharper for a moment, but it’s gone before she can make a note of what it means. “I knew that your name sounded familiar. Admittedly, it’s before my time as an instructor, but I’d heard of it.” _

_ Robin nods.  _

_ “I was told that you’d never fly again.” _

_ Robin grips her seat edge. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Remembering her eyes are closed: “Or sound like it.”  _

_ “Quite…” The clink echoes on the desk, and she reaches for it, placing it back in her pocket. “I’m both surprised to see you here, and yet… less so.”  _

_ The two are quiet for a bit. Robin opens her eyes.  _

_ “May I ask you a few questions?” _

\---

The instructor never says the same thing twice during class, so Robin makes sure to write everything down that she deems important. She’s proud of her writing speed- for the last two classes, she hadn’t missed anything that he said. She just knows that this will be the third. 

The class ends and she lets go of being in focus mode. It exhausts her immediately, her legs splaying across the floor in a very graceless manner. Robin knows deep down that leaving that focus mode was not going to be the best thing for her neurologically- even after four years, she still has little tics and talks slowly every now and again. Still, it’s always immediately relieving in the long term to stop pretending that she’s better than she is. Eventually, some time after most of the others filters out, she remains. She supposes that it’s time to clear her notes with the instructor, so she gets up. 

Then she sees Sumia. 

Sumia is a lot taller than she imagined. Robin is an average-sized woman (though she certainly feels waifish at times), and Sumia is around six feet by her estimations. Her gray hair veers toward both brown and wisteria at once, most of it wrapped up in a massive bun towards the back of her head. Her eyes are so big, matching her hair color. She wears two silver wings in her hair that act as clips for her bun. Robin tries her best to commit them all to memory because they probably won’t stay there for long. 

It takes her a second to hear the sniffling. 

Robin generally doesn’t have second thoughts, so she walks over to the desk that Sumia is hunched over. Her eyes are open and slick with tears, and she’s loose with exhaustion. “Sumia,” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

Sumia is a little surprised. “Oh! Um…” She looks up at Robin. She’s so soft that Robin checks into and out of her thoughts in a moment’s time. “I just had a bad time.”

“You did?” That’s not good; she isn’t sure how she feels about Sumia, but her memories prompt comfort into her mind. She should say more, but her mind stalls, leaving her blank. It happens sometimes. 

Sumia nods. “Yeah, like…” She buries her head like she’s embarrassed to tell her. 

“No, no, it’s okay.” Robin takes one of her hands and pries it away from the back of her head. “You don’t have to be scared to tell me.” 

Sumia gasps a little. Was Robin too close? Goodness, she wants to apologize, and she never does. Still, she’s accommodating and waits for Sumia to speak. “Okay. Uhm, thanks, by the way.”

“Of course.”

Sumia smiles. It’s shaky, but Robin is satisfied. “I, uh, I just feel like… I think there was one thing I didn’t take notes on, and I realized I spaced and tried to write it down, and then I missed another thing and I guess it all spiraled from there, you know?” She sniffles again. “Pretty stupid of me.”

Robin shakes her head. “I’ve done it before. Or just gave up and left it patchy. My notes used to be... pretty bad.”

Sumia looks at her again. Her eyes are so pretty. Too bad now’s not the time to drift away in them. If there’s a good time at all, really. “Really? How did you get better at it?”

Robin stops short of saying that the instructor helped her. That would do one of two things- make her look like a teacher’s pet getting an unfair advantage, or force her instead to reveal her problems with memory.  _ Telling her  _ and  _ losing her  _ seem synonymous in her head. 

So instead she says with a fumble in her voice “I just… this- this isn’t smart, so don’t emulate me.”

Sumia giggles. Robin loves her voice. It sounds like a pecan pie.

“I just… kinda zone out, and honestly, I don’t really learn until later. So when we go, like, hands-on, I kinda have to check my notes, like, oh yeah.” Sumia titters accommodatingly. “But I make sure to get down everything important and just… read it back to myself later, and that’s when I learn it. Then I keep doing it so I don’t forget.”

“ _ Oh. _ ” Sumia’s awestruck. Then she admits “I don’t think I can do that, honestly. I’m not great at focusing.”

“Don’t worry about it!” Robin only really does so because she forgets what she learned a lot. She often reads her notes just before exams so none of it leaves her head. There’s not much room for anything else, and it makes her anxious. 

Sumia frowns again. It’s like it’s the worst thing in the world. “I just… feel silly. It’s an entry-level class, and I’m failing.” Her voice hastens. “I’m so stupid! How am I ever gonna get further if I can’t do this, right?” 

Robin shakes her head. “You’re not stupid.” She stalls for a second, but Sumia is very accommodating. “No, you’re not. You’re gonna be just fine.”

Sumia doesn’t seem to believe her. “You don’t know that.”

“I mean…” Damn. Sumia got her there. “I can still have faith, right?”

Sumia lifts her head up just a little. “Yeah… if it’s not too much trouble. I think I need it sometimes. It just feels so… delusional, sometimes, to have that sort of faith in myself.”

“Am I delusional?” 

Robin raises an eyebrow as she says it, but sometimes, she’s just not sure. 

Sumia chuckles awkwardly, not really sure of what to say. Robin waits and Sumia rests her hand on her forehead, pushing back messy strands of her free hair behind her ear. “I mean, I don’t know. You might be.” Then, she catches herself with a panicked look, her entire body tensing. “B-but that’s no problem, I mean, thank you! I really appre- you’re a nice person, Robin.” She thinks for a second as Robin beams like she’s won a gold medal. “I-it is Robin, right?”

“Oh, definitely.” Is Robin the one losing her memory or Sumia? “It always- it has been.”

Sumia giggles, mouth and eyes closed. Robin deduces, can feel very strongly, that Sumia is beautiful in a very interesting way. Robin does her best with her white pigtails and too-small facial features, but even at her best, she’s still rather plain. Sumia is interesting. 

She can’t say she’s ever been motivated by an emotional attraction before, but her mind was right when she woke up that morning- Sumia is worth the warm fuzzies, and Robin still feels them. 

It only feels right to match that with a gesture. 

“If you want, I can message you my notes.” 

Sumia looks surprised, “You can do that?”

Robin thinks of the scanner in the academy library and the fact that everyone from her class has been added to a special online registry- email addresses included. “Easily! Don’t even worry.”

Sumia looks up at her in awe (and Robin notices that she’s rather averse to standing up). “You’d really do that for me?”

Robin looks back, more endeared than ever. She’s absolutely making the right choice, but she would anyways. Helping Sumia isn’t hard enough to take away the joy of doing so.

“Of course!”


	2. "These Things Happen, Okay? Just Breathe."

Robin wakes up and thinks of the name Sumia. 

She’s excited. That’s the first thing she notices. She’s so excited that she doesn’t take time to remember how Sumia looks. She’s as far as she was yesterday on remembering- gray hair, tan skin- but the thing that really wakes her up is the giggle on Sumia’s face that she offered yesterday. Robin’s pretty sure it was after she cracked a joke. She isn’t sure which one, but it’ll come to her.

Cause right now, in bed thinking of her, she’s happier than she expected.

\---

Robin often eats on the terrace so no one talks to her. 

It’s not that she hates talking to people. She gets along with people rather well. Still, she doesn’t have much to talk about and generally whoever talks with her does. Generally, she’s good at faking noncommittal answers to the do-you-know-what-I-means and what-about-yous, but none of what is talked about sticks with her throughout the entire day. Her own responses and attitudes to conversation were instinct; then again, what wasn’t? They weren’t people like Chrom, who talked  _ to  _ her. They talked at her and didn’t care that she’d never really get it.

Sitting crisscrossed on the ground, Robin first messages her friend Sully since it’s the lunch hour. Sully isn’t someone that Robin’s really tested the trust of, though she feels like it would go well. She’s a lifelong friend of Chrom’s and works as a teaching assistant, the only one to really consistently talk to her after the accident. Sully never imagined herself wanting to teach until it was her time to learn and she realized, as she told Robin “everyone here does it fucking wrong and I just want to gouge my gods-damned eyes out dealing with it”. She can’t imagine being that flexible, but she also doesn’t even know what she wants to do, so she kind of has to be. 

_ How’s your luck been going?  _

Robin isn’t one to start off with hellos. She hopes Sully gets it by now. Reading back, Sully stopped making jokes about it in their last few conversations. 

_ these kids are gems. _

_ k lemme correct. some of these kids are gems and some of them are “gems” _

Robin snorts laughter. Thank the Gods that she didn’t order a drink. 

_ Hah! First-years? _

_ you fuckin wish.  _

_ so do i though. it would make me less sad.  _

_ if i get another trainee with a “creative solution” that makes them look like a horse’s ass i’m gonna encourage teach to fail em _

The name “Teach” sounds familiar. She searches up “Teach” in the message history. Sully explained sometime last year that it meant Vaike. Oh yeah, Vaike. He and Robin talked maybe twice since the accident so she just remembers him as kind of dumb and sleazy, but inexplicably likable. He’s not exactly the first person she’d invite to a wedding, but she also kind of remembers her, Chrom, Sully, Vaike, Lissa, and a few others as, like, a friend circle, so… maybe. She’s starving for options. 

_ He isn’t already? I’m not surprised. This IS Vaike we’re talking about, right? _

_ yep. sun rises in the east. sets in the west. and vaike is a complete dld  _

_ (dumbass loving dumbass) _

She’s glad she let Sully explain herself.

_ Hah, you’re not wrong.  _

She realizes that she hasn’t touched her food. Deliberating on it like she’s about to launch a nuke, Robin takes the lid off of a pre-made salad she bought from one of the campus cafes, plastic fork in hand. That’s when she witnesses a thin line of orange liquid falling atop it and hears a shriek cut off by a sad, dull  _ thud.  _ Confused as can be, she looks around and sees a tall woman on the brick of the terrace, flopped onto her side, groaning in pain. 

Oh, wait, that’s  _ Sumia.  _ Robin almost didn’t recognize her save for the hair that the bun has miraculously held in place. Her face isn’t in that cute giggle face, but it looks like it could be eventually. 

“Hello,” Robin blurts, heart already racing between the time it took to identify Sumia and now. Then, after she gets her faculties together: “Oh my goodness! Um, are you okay?”

Sumia pushes herself up with a grunt. “Yeah, don’t worry.” With a disappointed sigh, she adds “I’m used to it.” 

Memories of Sumia trigger within her mind.  _ Oh yeah. She  _ is  _ rather clumsy.  _ Sometimes Sumia just interacts with objects wrong, dropping pens and schoolbooks and hitting snags in carpet and cement that at best make her stumble a little. Sometimes it feels like she trips over nothing in dramatic fashion. Robin makes a note of that in her head to consider for future reference. 

Robin sets the salad down and holds her hands out, which Sumia takes to get her bearings and sit up. Sumia looks at the salad, now drenched in orange. “Oh my gods, I’m so sorry!” She finagles around her for an empty bottle of orange juice. Robin hmms in understanding. “I’ll buy you a new one, I’m so sorry I ruined it!”

Robin tilts her head. That salad chop was a blend that she could imagine coping with orange juice. Curious, she takes a bite. It tastes sweeter than she expected, but she doesn’t mind the tang. It doesn’t clash with the flavors already there. 

“It’s good,” she concludes, giving Sumia a forgiving thumbs up. It probably would have taken a lot more than a spill to get mad at her. “Nice to see you!”

Sumia blushes, sitting criss-cross next to her. “Aww, it’s nice to see you too! I wish it had been in a different way, though. I’m such a klutz sometimes! I’m so sorry about your salad!”

Robin shakes her head. “It’s fine. Like I said, it tastes good. Good enough for it to not matter.”

Sumia looks at the ground. “I-if you say so.” Before Robin’s thoughts can transition, she adds “I just wanted to thank you for copying all your notes! They’re so extensive!”

Robin beams. “I just figured I should try... to pass it around more.”

She giggles, but it’s shy this time. She looks down through it. “Either way, thank you.” 

Robin notices that Sumia’s lap is empty save for the disgraced juice bottle sitting between her legs. “Did you get anything to eat?”

Sumia shakes her head. “I was still thinking about that. I might later.”

That sounds to Robin kind of like what she says when she’s made no plans to eat but doesn’t want to be bugged. Robin thinks, then puts a little of her salad on the lid. She’s been blessed with a second plastic fork, which she hands over to Sumia. 

“Oh, no, I couldn’t!” 

Robin shakes her head. “It’s okay.” With a chuckle: “I promise it tastes okay even with the orange juice.”

Sumia giggles awkwardly. “I’m really sorry about that.”

“It’s seriously okay,” Robin insists, a bit of an edge in her voice. “Have some salad.”

“You’re too kind.” Robin isn’t sure if Sumia’s compliment is another way of getting out of eating the salad until she takes a bite. It’s contemplative and deliberate, making a judgment in live time of the spontaneously added orange tang. Then: “You’re sure I didn’t ruin this?”

Robin chuckles. “I mean… I mean, like it, at least.” She has a distinct feeling that she’ll be eating the rest alone; still, better that Sumia doesn’t like it than Sumia thinks she doesn’t deserve it. 

It gets quiet, and while Robin could keep stealing glances at Sumia, even the noblest circumstances don’t stop her from feeling awkward. She tries to commit Sumia’s facial features to memory, then the little idiosyncrasies of her expressions, movements, and tics. Sumia avoids her gaze, but Robin can still see the heat on her cheeks. She flusters too many people in her conversations with her… let’s say, extra layer of focus, so she focuses on something the two can appropriately talk about. 

“Those wing clips in your hair…” 

Sumia locks gaze with her quickly. “Oh, oh yeah! Uhm, what about them?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before. Do they symbolize anything?”

Sumia smiles, a warm and cautious thing quietly laden with nostalgia and passion. “I mean, kind of and kind of not? It reminds me of my moms reading to me. I loved fairy tales, and then I kind of loved fantasy when I grew up. And my favorite fantasy animal was a pegasus, so this kind of reminds me of the idea of flying on one.”

Robin smiles. What a nice story. Sumia having two moms doesn’t even have a distant impact so she must not have known it before. Robin takes a lot of comfort in that. Her own father was awful to her, she remembers, and Robin would like to be a mom to fix that. And if it’s with another mom, that’s even better. More importantly, she loves to read. She absolutely loves it. True, she can’t retain plot specifics for a lot of them aside from the bare bones and how they made her feel, but that just makes them more fun to reread. 

She wonders what kind of books Sumia likes. 

Sumia continues. “And I guess now that I’m here, in the academy and all, it means a different thing.” Swallowing, she says “I, um… I want to be in the air force, you know.”

Robin isn’t prepared for her own reaction to that. She tenses up and closes her eyes, fist clenched at her side. She tries to take deep breaths, tries to stop alarming Sumia (she’s very reactive, Robin finds) and tries not to think of flames, of pain, of anesthesia. Probably the thing that surprises Robin the most is that part of her is very angry at something, but she doesn’t know what. 

Of course she doesn’t know what. 

She’s broken like that.

Sumia taps her shoulder gently. “Everything okay?”

Robin blinks a few times at her voice and takes her hand while her inner monologue is too busy to tell her not to. “I’m…” It takes her a while to finish that thought. “I’m not sure.”

Sumia shakes her head sadly like a mother seeing her child in pain. “Poor dear… I didn’t know.”

Neither did Robin. She just clenches Sumia’s hand and lifts it to her heart. “It’s okay,” she insists. “It’ll pass. This feeling.”

Sumia still doesn’t let her go. “I hope.” Mournfully: “You seem so upset.”

Robin closes her eyes again, feeling embarrassed. “Oh no. No, I’m sorry that I worried you!”

“Don’t be, okay? These things happen. Just breathe.” 

Has Sumia always had this soothing way about her, or is this just the first time that Robin noticed? Either way, she’s feeling a lot calmer as she follows Sumia’s instructions and just breathes for a minute. Sumia shushes her in a way that feels more loving than she expected. 

“Thank you,” Robin finally says when she feels well enough to. Shame acute in her gut, she adds “Sorry I got you caught up in this mess.” 

“It’s okay!” Sumia insists. “I used to work on a horse ranch, so, like, it’s really important that you know how to react when one of them gets stressed or panicked.”

Robin giggles and waits for Sumia to realize her faux-pas. 

When she does, her eyes widen and he raises her hands in front of her chest like  _ she’s  _ panicking. “N-not that you’re a horse!” As she insists, Robin lets loose a cackle. “I totally didn’t mean to call you one! I just meant, like, the same principle as a horse could- you know, it’s all just very weird.”

Robin still giggles as she says “It’s okay, Sumia, I promise.” She realizes that she’s never said Sumia’s name aloud. It feels… correct, but she can’t say why. 

“I hope so.”

“I  _ promise _ ,” she insists. 

Sumia’s tension finally leaves her body. Her hand relaxes in Robin’s. She doesn’t ask to move it, to Robin’s relief. “Thanks, Robin.” It sounds nice when Sumia says her name back. 

Then: “Oh my goodness, I have a class that starts in ten minutes! I, uhm-” She stands up, releasing Robin’s hand. “I-I’ll talk to you later, okay? Sorry!” 

“Be careful!” Robin calls out. It comes with a feeling of dread in her stomach, but she isn’t sure why. 

Sumia doesn’t run like she’s about to fall over after that. “Right. Thanks!” With one last smile, she’s out of sight. Robin already feels a lot emptier when she leaves, but reasons that it’s not any different of a state than she walked into the situation with. 

So why does it feel different?


	3. "It Was Nothing."

Robin wakes up from a nightmare. 

She hasn’t had a nightmare for so long, and she thought she knew how to cope with them. As her memory got better than when it first happened, she started to memorize routines. Write them down, even, in case she  _ did  _ forget. She has a special little notepad she keeps a lot of the most important things in, and that includes moments like this. She wants to search for it but is so tired and hasn’t used it in awhile. Still, she has to do something. This wasn’t supposed to happen again. She wasn’t supposed to have these memories again. 

A voice in her head shushes her, speaking to the very panic in her thoughts. It feels like a deity- she isn’t sure what it is, but it slowly calms her, making her happy to know that a deity has given kindness to her. 

She sees her clock. It’s three-thirty. She still has time before she can wake up. She just isn’t sure if she’ll go back to the nightmare if she sleeps again. The more her head calms her, the more it feels like it won’t. 

_ These things happen. Just breathe.  _

Robin does as she’s told, breathing steadily until her breaths surrender to the gravity of sleep.

\---

Robin wakes up peacefully and stays in place until her alarm goes off. When it does, she makes sure to sit up, stretch, and remove her nightgown before shutting it off so she isn’t lulled back asleep. She pulls on an undershirt from her closet and smacks her lips together as she chases off the final throes. She isn’t sure what feels off, though. Something in her body feels off, like a feeling of dread and peace, and she can’t tell if she’s nauseous or not. 

She considers texting someone about these feelings, but she isn’t sure she wants to text Sully. She rarely texts Sully about nightmares and isn’t sure that it would help. Besides, she forgot to reply to the prior conversation after Sumia happened, so she would feel bad. 

She wants to text her best friend. 

Chrom is one of the friends that she kept before and after the accident. She knows that Chrom is away on deployment, which she somberly remembers that they were meant to do together. Chrom had it in his blood, being born to a prominent Ylissean family. Robin was a prodigy. She remembers it because that’s who they were meant to be, the noble and the prodigy. They were dorks like that. They needed names.

Now Chrom is off alone, and Robin wonders what he would say. 

Chrom is… not smart in ways of the mind and heart. While that makes him a very relaxed person (she can’t imagine most older brothers being cool about their best friends dating their younger sister, though that seems like a  _ them  _ problem more than a Chrom one) it also means that she can only imagine him saying something about how her anxiety might go away with coffee.

...hell with it, coffee might help. 

She goes through her routine. She drinks her coffee at the kitchen table. She takes a warm shower that isn’t too hot. She brushes tangles out of her hair, pulls them into her pigtails, then brushes her teeth. She reads her notes once and prepares to suit up before she reads them again. Her slacks go on first, replacing whatever gym shorts were on under her nightgown, and then her top follows, the undershirt, jacket, and tie. 

Everything goes well until she places her hand in the jacket pocket. 

Then it doesn’t go  _ badly,  _ but it does put an end to her vibe. 

It never leaves her pocket. She knows that she should have it- it  _ did  _ help with the instructor- but that’s as far as she wants it, really. Because now it doesn’t just make her think of  _ herself.  _ It makes her think of Sumia. That should be nice. She can think of Sumia a little clearer now. She can think of Sumia’s clumsiness. Of her love of books. Of the wing clips in her hair, which this reminds her of. 

Honestly, though, she wishes it didn’t. 

Not that Robin can stop her from wearing them because she gets anxious at it. It’s just hard to not feel flames, pain, and anesthesia when she sees it. It’s hard not to imagine Sumia feeling it. 

One person knowing how that feels is enough. 

Robin lets it go. She all but has to force her fingers off of it, then force her hands together for good measure to avoid whatever magnetic pull it has on her.  _ These things happen,  _ she hears.  _ Just breathe.  _

Robin does. She feels a little better. 

\---

Robin doesn’t usually do this but she feels rather tempted. And after the nightmares, she needs to relax.

She goes to the library.

That’s not the thing she doesn’t usually do. She loves the library. Not only is it because of her love of books made to enjoy, but she also really loves the nonfiction. She’ll borrow history books and test herself on what she can retain before she reads them again to gain more information. She’ll read manuals and test out what she can and mentally hypothesize the rest to challenge herself. It’s a part of retraining her brain that her doctors stressed the importance of, cognizance, but it’s also just something Robin loves to do. Something she’d do anyway.

If it helps her get better, that’s even greater. 

Still, that’s not why she’s here. She’s here because she did some thinking. Why does Sumia have those wings in her hair? Thinking back, that’s the most pressing thing- Sumia wants to be in the air force. Robin’s thoughts seemed geared to stop there, but that wasn’t all. Sumia mentioned her mothers and how they read to her. How that seemed to make her a reader. Or, at the very least, something connected Sumia to the idea of reading. 

It was a hunch, but a hunch that Robin was willing to try. 

Trying not to be too conspicuous is the hard part. Robin tries to spend a little time in every empty aisle she checks like she meant to go there. She doesn’t want to give off the impression that she didn’t care to be there, and she doesn’t want anyone to ask her what she's doing. Looking for a friend who didn’t know you're looking for her and may not be there just seems… oddly, scarily devoted. At this point, Robin wonders if she is. 

Not long enough for it to stick, however. 

Robin clears the nonfiction section not having found her. She’s planning on visiting the textbooks after she does a little thinking. She remembers the wings again. It’s not always fun, but it can help in a pinch. Right now, the wings remind her of something Sumia said about pegasi. Her brain deconstructs it. What kind of book would pegasi be in? They’re not real, so fiction. They’re especially not real, though. They’re like… they seem like a creature that would be in-

Wait.

Robin snaps, eyes lit up. 

Two minutes finds her in the fantasy section looking at familiar gray-brown-wisteria hair (there’s got to be an easier way to describe it) with wing clips in it. A person is attached to it, with a face that Robin is more familiar with by the day. The uniform is also just like hers, save for the long tube skirt at the end. Seems like it would make her more susceptible to tripping, but maybe she knows something Robin doesn’t. 

Sumia turns and notices Robin, who waves with a flush on her cheeks. “Robin!” she says with a smile. Robin almost responds before she notices that Sumia’s dropped the book she was looking at on her toe. She yelps in shock more than pain, jumping back, arms grabbing the sides of both shelves. She doesn’t fall, and Robin rushes forward to grab the book before she  _ does  _ fall. She hands it to Sumia, who gives an awed “thank you” in response. 

“It was nothing,” Robin responds, scratching the back of her neck. 

“Still,” she says as she straightens herself up. “I appreciate it!” Holding the book under the crook of her arm, she asks “What brings you here?”

It’s at that moment that Robin realizes that she doesn’t know. A flicker of panic hits her eyes as she formulates an answer. She hasn’t read fiction in a while, so technically she shouldn’t be here… but at the same time, being here feels right for reasons other than Sumia being here too. 

“Do you… do you have any recommendations?”

Sumia’s face seems to clear of something that Robin didn’t notice before. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” A smile wider than Robin has ever remembered crosses her face. There’s a hint of surprise, but it seems so small. She checks her watch. “Class is in twenty minutes, so I was really threading the needle here.” She punctuates this with a laugh. “But, ah, let me think…”

When Sumia thinks, it’s visible- finger on her chin, gaze floating somewhere in space. Robin takes it in. It feels unique to her. Finally, Sumia lands back on Earth. “Oh, okay, so…” She immediately looks at where she’s at and visibly thinks again. “Okay, just let me- do you mind sci-fi?” 

Robin shakes her head. She doesn’t mind reading anything. Besides, she’s going to wholesale trust Sumia’s judgment on this. It’ll be nice to have something that reminds Robin of her. Sumia walks down the aisle towards her and checks the letters. Robin says nothing, probably because Sumia being this close raises some sort of alarm in her head. Not one that says this is wrong, but that it shouldn’t make her feel a way so sorely unfamiliar to her. 

Sumia has sort floral perfume on. Robin feels like she’ll remember that. Also like she could have called that if she wanted. 

Her thoughts are interrupted by Sumia finding and yanking out the book with an  _ a-ha!  _ She hands it to Robin, dropping the book again as she does. Robin notices even when she doesn’t, grabbing it off the floor again. It’s no worse for wear, she assesses. 

“So this is like, it’s set in a sci-fi time and world in the future, but, like, there’s all sorts of fantasy elements in it with the setting and the characters. So, like, medieval but with spaceships rather than horses.”

“Any pegasi?” Robin half-jokes. 

Sumia giggles and she feels proud that she made that happen. “Sadly, not in this one. You should still like it, though!”

Robin looks at the name of the book and author but it doesn’t really stick. Oh well, Sumia recommended it to her and that’s really all she cares about. “Thanks so much.”

“Oh, no problem!” Sumia says. Robin hands her own book back to her and Sumia takes it with relief. “And thank you too! Sorry, when I get into book mode I can lose track of myself so hard.”

Robin laughs. She doesn’t even need books to do that. 

She turns around to walk. “Anyway, class starts in… I wanna say, fifteen minutes now, so it would probably be a good idea to check out the books and walk over, you know?” 

Robin nods. At that moment, an idea crosses her mind, but she isn’t sure what to make of it. She thinks that maybe she can ask later, or maybe later she can do it herself, but no, that’d be icky not to ask first, and it’s not like she stands a good chance at remembering later, so she goes for it.

“Real quick, if you don’t mind,” she asks, and Sumia stops. “Would it be all right if I took a picture of you?”

Sumia’s eyes widen in a way that is not as unwelcoming as Robin feared. “O-oh? How come?”

Robin shrugs instinctively, but the thought of telling her the truth still makes her fear. “It would just be nice to have it.” She thinks for a second. “Is that, is that weird?”

Sumia thinks for a second, again visibly so. “From you, not at all. You’re always really forward, and it’s…” she blushes. “It’s really nice.” Straightening up, she finishes with “So yeah, go for it!”

Robin beams. She’s glad Sumia’s letting herself be photographed because she’s so pretty that Robin doesn’t want to forget. She pulls her phone out and turns the flash on. Accommodatingly, Sumia holds her book and smiles. It’s a little professional by nature, but there’s a spark of unadulterated happiness in it that makes Robin feel good as she takes the photo. It turns out well. An iridescent sash of lens flare across her chest is the only odd thing about it, and Robin likes it too much for a retake. 

Sumia relaxes. “I looked okay, right?”

Robin nods, holding the screen out so she can see the photo. Sumia points to different attributes of it so lightly that Robin isn’t sure if she is, but in the end, Sumia looks at Robin and says “I mean... if you like it.”

“I do.” 

Sumia smiles shyly again. Robin feels like she’s won something whenever she makes Sumia smile. 

“Let’s go get those books checked out, okay?”

\---

Robin takes notes on the book as she reads it because she has homework to do for a few classes and knows that she cannot finish it that night. Note-taking has been a special tic for her and has since she became more capable. What she cannot remember, she can get proof of in writing. Besides, it’s not hard to do, especially for a great book. She can immediately relive it. 

It’s already something fascinating to Robin to read it knowing that Sumia did first. She can just imagine Sumia, eyes wide, getting sucked into the book. She always was a fast reader- whenever the instructor told them to open to a passage in their textbooks, Sumia finished reading before everyone else. She can’t imagine that Sumia would be any different here.

She wonders what Sumia liked. What characters were her favorites? What did she think of the plot twists? What sort of spaceship was the coolest? She compares that last one to Sumia joining the air force, which still isn’t a good thought, but that probably just means that she’s thought of the spaceships before. 

Robin decides that she’s done reading for now, but her mind is still not clear. She flips to a blank page and writes down Sumia’s name. It’s not an approach she’s really considered before, to take notes on a person. People do not have plots or instructions in the same way that other things in her life do. Still, she thinks of the photo. Then she grabs her phone and pulls it up. Sumia, with the spark in her smile, light in her eyes, hair down to her waist, book in her arm… it does something to Robin’s breathing that she expects but doesn’t at the same time. 

Sumia is someone that Robin should remember. 

She jots down the things that she can remember. Sumia is clumsy. She thinks back on Sumia falling on the terrace. She remembers how tall Sumia is. She looks at the book and remembers that Sumia loves to read. That brings her to the idea of fantasy. Eventually, Robin has to put that Sumia wants to join the air force. She draws a frown next to it. She can’t help herself.

Sumia isn’t great at taking notes. And sometimes she panics. Sometimes she thinks she isn’t good enough. Sometimes when she and Robin talk she seems surprised that Robin is her friend. That Robin might have a crush on her. That she deserves to be crushed on if Robin wants. And then Robin remembers just how beautiful she is, and how helpless it makes her in kind. How she doesn’t really want to be helped.

The last thing she can think of is something she isn’t sure if she wants to write. She’s never had reason to before. But it feels too important to leave off. 

She writes it before she stops herself and then breathes deeply. She scared herself, but she also feels like she’s on a higher level than she ever was. Maybe that’s what scares her: knowing where she is.

She sets the pad down and rummages for a textbook.


	4. "I Want To Be Under Trees Like These."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably have added the first bit to the last chapter, but we're too late now so um enjoy a longie

Robin wakes up in the morning to the sound of the alarm. She paws at it and just hits air. It takes a minute for her to realize that she’s face down in her medical history textbook in her lap, a thin coating of drool on the page. She’d feel bad, but she paid $200 for this textbook so she’s entitled to giving it a little drool. She wipes it up with her nightgown, not really caring, and realizes that she’s lying against the bed on the floor. 

With a mighty lift, she gets up to stop the alarm. She sits on her bed panting, waiting for the energy to begin her routine. As she does, she checks her phone for any alerts that she might have gotten. Sully sent a good morning text with a file name in it. Probably a photo of her in class. That’ll be neat to check out.

She unlocks it and gets hit in the face full-blast with a photo of Sumia. 

Her heart hastens mercilessly. She feels like she unlocked something amazing. The photograph is… well, her camera has never been great, but she tends to forget a lot of details about Sumia’s appearance. She knows the hair. She knows the wing clips. She knows that her giggle is cute. With this, though, she knows that Sumia’s tall, that her face is slight and kind, that she’s well-built and could tackle and restrain Robin despite being soft and pudgy.

Robin beams. Gods, what on Earth made someone as pretty as Sumia decide to be her friend? 

She decides to start her routine by picking up her books. They’re not exactly strewn on the floor, but they’re still in random places near evidence of her sitting. She gathers them and sets them from largest to smallest on her table. Atop the stack is a book called  _ Y.S.C. von Aegir and the Unfortunate Crash Landing.  _ Robin gets good vibes from it but struggles to piece together the plot. Something about a rugged old lieutenant who pilots a charter ship and a crash landing that makes her lead a bunch of passengers across a more medieval-style land. 

It probably made more sense when she read it, but it still makes her happy to see.

She finally gets ready- coffee, shower, brushing hair and teeth, getting dressed- she reads her notes again just to get caught up. It’s important that she knows where she left off in her medical history textbook, so she flips through her notepad. She finds that she’s taken notes on  _ von Aegir  _ and almost gets distracted by them, so she flips to the last page of that section. 

She’s surprised by what she sees instead. 

Even moreso by how it ends.

Does she really think that? Does she really think what she said? She deduces that, yes, that’s how she feels. That complicates things even further, though. How does she know that’s how she feels? How does she know that she’s not lonely? How does she know that she’s not being a worrywart? How does she know she just hasn’t forgotten what it was like? 

A lot of people she’s come across don’t know a damn thing, but if she does, she can’t remember them half the time. 

It’s hard to leave that page feeling okay. It’s hard to leave it knowing what to compare it to. If she had anyone, even for a brief time, it is hard to remember them as more than outlines. She remembers people through the years- her first boyfriend (not a good memory, feels inauthentic), her first girlfriend, her first real relationship, Lissa, and occasionally others- and she knew whether or not they were  _ good  _ or  _ bad.  _ Still, the experiences were inexperienced, the lessons were unlearned, and who they  _ were  _ lay abandoned, leaving just shells she once loved. 

Yet… she took the effort of committing Sumia to memory. Of all the near-misses, all of the girls that interested her in the last few years, of all the times where she felt what Sumia makes her feel, Sumia is the first one she took notes on. 

Sumia is the first one that she felt this strongly about.

Strongly enough to write what she wrote at the end.

Robin feels a cool wave of anxiety pass through her, each splash sharp and upsetting. She tries to read past it into her other notes but can’t. There are so many things about it that feel right, and another big part of her that feels wrong for wanting it. That feels like a liability who wants too much. 

That feeling is impossible to shake, so Robin does the only thing she knows how in situations like this: swallow, put it away, and focus on what she needs to do. 

She’ll deal with it later.

\---

Robin stays in a bit of an in-between zone. Enough to stay where she is, but enough to keep Sumia interested. 

It doesn’t stay that way for long.

Of course, Robin can’t leave well enough alone. She still asks Sumia if she was able to take adequate notes. Sumia always says  _ yes.  _ Sometimes she sounds like she means it, and sometimes she sounds too embarrassed to be telling the truth. Robin wants her to confess and not feel bad about needing help, but she can’t imagine her softly conveying that fact when there’s so much passion prevalent in it. 

She’s never been a good liar. 

So she just says “you’re okay”. Sumia pretends not to get it, but Robin isn’t really buying it. Those days, Robin transcribes her notes and sends them to Sumia. Sometimes Sumia says that Robin shouldn’t have or doesn’t have to, but stops when Robin’s actions make her insistence clear. 

Robin finishes  _ von Aegir _ . She takes notes on everything. When she’s bored or lonely on days where she doesn’t see Sumia at all, she rereads her notes and remembers the adventures of the grizzled but affable Captain Flavia and the passengers aboard the  _ von Aegir.  _ She wonders if Sumia liked the lounge singer, Olivia, who was one of the passengers. Olivia always talked like she wasn’t able to do anything, yet she always did so well at whatever task she presents herself with. Maybe Sumia wants to be like Olivia, but she probably already is. 

They talk about the book sometimes. Robin’s reread it so that she can talk about it in more detail. She mentions that she likes Olivia and, as she expected and wanted, Sumia waxes poetic about how amazing Olivia is both as a character and a figure to look up to. In less than a few minutes, she gives a stunning lecture on feminist tone in media that Robin  _ wishes  _ they taught around here. Olivia was not only someone to look up to as a kid for just her looks and status, but as someone who focused on herself, turning her outlook on her flaws from something uncontrollable to something that she can conquer. 

“Like, a lot of the girl love interests  _ never  _ get a chance to be their own character,” she declares, hands atop a gray linoleum table. “Whether it’s with a guy or not. And it seems if they’re both girls only the main character really gets the right to develop. It’s like you have to earn it by being some amazing being.”

“And they’re very much  _ not _ in a lot of the male-driven books,” Robin responds with a snort. 

She all but leaps up, clapping violently. “I mean, you said it!” Her loudness is undercut by a sharp  _ shhh!  _ from a faceless librarian that Sumia whispers a skittish apology towards. Still, she’s not stopped. “So yeah, that’s why I think taking the time on Olivia really makes me happy. A lot of love interests… well, they seem like their story ends on the last page, like, you can’t see where they go next. Olivia… she’s got  _ such  _ a future ahead of her.” 

She says the last sentence with stars in her eyes and love in her voice. Robin’s eyes widen at it. She challenges the gods to tell her that it’s wrong to fall for someone like this. Her father used to say things like that and blame the gods. The gods… they see all, correct? How could they condemn this? How could they tell her that she was not supposed to fall for Sumia?

Sumia clears her throat. “Sorry. I just get really into literature analogy.” With a haughty sniff: “It’s  _ so  _ much more interesting than all the classes I take combined.”

“It was good,” Robin promises. That is the only time that she doesn’t tell the whole truth, but if she did Sumia would either sob or run and not only would that hurt her heart, Sumia would probably trip and not let Robin help her up. So she lets the conversation go and waits for Sumia to regale her about something else.

Saturday finds them both training. It’s mandatory in the academy to consistently pass physical education if your goal is to work on the field. Sometimes Sumia is in the same group, sometimes she’s not. Does she get distracted by Sumia in a tank top and khaki shorts? More than she would be okay with admitting. 

Robin’s already spent years getting back into reasonable physical shape, so while she’s slower than most, that’s okay. Endurance is more important than strength. Someone should tell Sumia that. She’s about as slow as Robin, and since one usually waits to catch up to each other, they’re in the back a lot. Yet Sumia is so aggressive and wild. She flails and throws herself and stomps and runs when she needs to jog. 

Robin tries to calm her down the first time, and Sumia complies. She admits that she just wants to show what we can do like she still doubts herself. Robin notices it anew every time, often forgetting about the ones prior until she experiences strong deja vu on her fourth time. Around her fifth time, Sumia snaps and says “ _ Please,  _ Robin, just leave me alone on this. You do this every time, and I don’t want you to.” 

It hurts her heart, but she complies. 

After Robin dresses back in her uniform, she finds Sumia crying in the locker room. Robin’s never seen her cry before, hands shamefully on her eyes trying to hold in tears, quiet little sobs that sound like odd sneezes. Sumia looks up at her and chokes out an apology. In response, Robin hugs her until she realizes that Sumia was in the middle of getting dressed. Explains why she felt her skin around the edges of her tank top. She doesn’t know which of the two panics harder, but eventually, Sumia slips an undershirt on and Robin leaves the bathroom stall she dove into.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you.” 

Robin shrugs. “I appreciate that, but I’m not really, really mad. Honestly, now I’m concerned about you. I hope... I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Sumia shakes her head. “No, not at all! I just…” she sighs. “It’s hard. You really shouldn’t worry about it.” 

Robin takes a seat on the bench next to her. “I do this a lot,” she says wearily. “But I’m gonna be worried anyway, so don’t be worried. Like, that  _ I’m  _ worried. I worry a lot.”

“But I don’t  _ want  _ you to worry about me!”

“I wanna, though…” 

Robin starts off so confidently and then trickles into an embarrassed whisper. Maybe she’s worrying too much. Maybe she’s worrying Sumia too much back. Still, what else can she say? She can’t sell a lie and she can’t change the truth. 

Sumia looks at Robin with stony grief tinted by the feeling of loss. There’s something she realizes then, as judged by her little surprised “Oh” which doesn't sound too surprised at all. To talk to Robin takes effort, and all she says is “This is something I can’t stop just because you asked me to.”

Robin looks disappointed. She’s thankful that Sumia waits for Robin to think of all of the routines that she couldn’t stop for anything so that Robin can look more understanding. Sumia nods, looking at Robin trying to maintain eye contact with her. “I hope you understand.”

“I do,” Robin promises. Sumia looks marginally happier, even though they both are feeling dismal. 

On some occasions, she has a doctor’s appointment or two to run through. It’s always off-campus, though she’s seen the counselor and the health office here to know the difference well. A lot of people in the off-campus universities are probably very kind and mean well, but aside from her primary care physician, she never sees them again, so she kind of has to hope so. They don’t leave enough of an impact positively or negatively for Robin to really live with. She just assumes that they’re like her doctor (maybe not as wordy as her, though you can tell that she cares.)

Does she get any further? Well, her memory seems to have improved a little, but mostly because she really focuses since she can’t take notes on their exercises. Short-term seems like it’s at baseline level functional, long-term is still patchy but is improving steadily. It all feels slow. The doctor is probably the one who caused her to take such a pragmatic approach to life that involved taking notes and using other devices to retain memory. Something about it still doesn’t seem to have a goal, however. All that she can hold onto is a distant “feel better” and trying to do better now. 

It doesn’t feel like  _ enough.  _

And she wishes she could tell someone about how it makes her feel. 

She still eats on the terrace. Sometimes people pass her. Sometimes there’s no one there. Just as well, given the weather’s lethargic turn towards winter. She brings a raincoat some days and sits under the table with an umbrella on it. It’s a shift from her routine, but it’s practical. 

Sometimes Sumia finds her. She’s often more cautious when she walks and keeps her drinks shut until she sits down, which Robin appreciates because she can’t imagine Sumia’s juice choices mixing well with her salads. Besides, the more juice Sumia keeps, the more that she can drink. 

They’ll talk about class, about upcoming assignments, about the instructor named Frederick. Robin makes note of that on her phone. She wonders how many times she can be discreet about pulling up her phone in the middle of conversations. 

Sometimes they talk about their own individual classes. It’s nice to hear Sumia talk about all of the different classes that she’s taking. She’s still at the base of her pyramid aiming to build up to something like being in the air force. Robin knows that she’s spinning her wheels taking classes still, and every time Sumia makes a disparaging remark about how she’s not that good or is still so far away from her dreams, Robin shuts it down before she realizes how intense she gets. Sumia is always surprised, but she gets used to it after a while. During that while,  _ I didn’t mean to make you worry  _ turns into  _ thanks for worrying about me,  _ and Robin imagines that a sign of progress. 

Some days Sumia visits seem intentional. Once she brings by her best friend, pulling on her arm so hard that her friend has to keep her from tripping. If that isn’t  _ bringing,  _ Robin doesn’t know what is. It’s interesting to see her best friend. It feels like there are quotations around it. It seems a little too touchy, a little too proud to show each other off, and her friend is insanely protective of her more than Robin could ever be. She feels a low buzz of disappointment for herself seeing it, but she’s just happy that there’s someone to do well by Sumia.

Sumia’s “best friend” Cordelia seems very nice. She’s formal and strict, from what Robin can retain, and while it’s impressive that she’s with someone as unbound as Sumia, to tolerate the presence of Robin is another thing entirely. Robin knows that she seems rude when she doesn’t mean to be and that she’s blunt and types into her phone a lot. 

Maybe Sumia keeps encouraging her friend to give her a chance. That’s the only reason Robin can think of as to why she looks at Robin passively as she talks, twirling her red hair around a finger and preparing a stock answer. The woman is interesting. Probably not the type that Robin would be friends with herself (not that there are many) but harmless and admirable. She's in her third year where Sumia is in her first, also aiming for the air force. She mentions that she knew Chrom and his sister in a woebegone way, but when Robin searches her overall message history with Chrom that night, there’s no mention of her. 

Cordelia does not show up often after that, then not at all. Robin considers asking Sumia about her because if she’s happy then Sumia is. She always forgets. 

Sumia and Robin deign to go on a walk together even in the rain. The first time Sumia slips in a puddle, Robin tells her she can hold onto her arm and she wouldn’t mind. (She’d just hope that she wouldn’t melt.) The second time she slips, Sumia takes her up on that. Robin doesn’t melt because she reminds herself that Sumia isn’t slipping anymore. Their hoods on, they walk a little more around the academy under the decaying trees. Sumia says she likes fall a lot. “After all, it’s half of what I do anyways!” It takes Robin a second, but then she cackles. 

“You’re just fine,” she insists. 

Sumia makes a sort of mewling sound. “You’re too sweet.” 

Robin scratches the back of her neck. She’s not good at this. “I’m as sweet as you deserve, silly.” 

With a hastened gasp, Sumia leans into her in a way that gives her pause. It’s the kind of pause that changes things. Robin isn’t sure where she is, but she looks up at Sumia in a way that says  _ did you mean to do that  _ and Sumia looks back in a way that says  _ yes, Robin, I suppose I did.  _ She figures that wherever she is, it wasn’t where she was just a half-minute before. It’s like they’re their own story, and Robin isn’t sure whether she’s the hero, the love interest, or just very,  _ very  _ sorry, but she knows that she’s here. 

Sumia never really talks about other girls, even about Cordelia. Robin doesn’t either; she doesn’t feel like she has the experience. She’d only really be dropping the hint that she’s gay. She talked about women casually with a straight woman once, not even trying to hint anything. That wasn’t taken well. Even though this was before the accident, Robin never forgot. 

The dreaded women who loved women had to make do. Robin learned this from a young age, to dance around a hidden set of rules that she didn’t know existed until she ran face-first into them, dressing her wounds with secrecy as the book told her to. Stay by the side, out of everyone else’s way, and accept that unless she found those hidden women, hiding like her, she would never be loved. It is so hard to leave that cage, and yet…

“I want to meet up with you again sometime.” There’s smoke in Robin’s voice, and where there’s smoke, there’s fire. 

“Absolutely, Robin!” Sumia chuckles like it’s obvious. Her breath is steam against the side of Robin’s head. “We meet up like every day, right?”

Robin nods. At this rate, they essentially do. Still, that isn’t the whole of it. “I… really need to think some things through. Over the next few days.” She holds up her hand. “I mean, we can see each other, of course. Like we already do. I just…” She rubs her temples and Sumia looks at her, naively confused. “I want to tell you something, and I’m not sure that I’m ready yet, but when we do…” 

Robin looks around her. 

“I wanna be under trees just like these, okay?”

It’s clear to see that either Sumia doesn’t quite get it, or she isn’t giving herself permission to. Still, like anything else weird that Robin does, she humors it. “That sounds nice. I’m looking forward to seeing what you decide, okay?”

Robin believes that she means it. 


	5. "I'm Just Glad You're Here At All"

Robin wakes up one morning and doesn’t get a moment’s peace before she remembers.

Last night when she realized it was gone, it was too late in the evening to call lost and found, and it was also too late to go back to her classrooms to find it. She blinks a few times and realizes that she’s woken up so early that there’s no way any of that is open now, but she can’t go back to sleep. She’s too anxious, anxious in a way that she so rarely is. At the same time, it is all so sickeningly familiar. It’s all a house of cards that takes one tiny push, isn’t it?

Stupid! How stupid of her! Robin groans, wrapping her pillow around her head. What kind of person cannot function without a notepad save for her? Why is she even alive? Gods… 

She squeezes the pillow as if to cut off her own thoughts. When they get like this, they’re so pervasive, and they all scream at her. Most call her an idiot. An idiot for losing the notepad. An idiot for needing a notepad to remember. An idiot for writing everything about Sumia on there, losing everything that wasn’t on her phone. An idiot for entertaining the notion that she deserves anyone. That anyone deserves to have to put up with her. 

An idiot for the accident. 

A single voice in her head says “These are the consequences of your actions. This is what you deserve. Accept it.”

They all sound like her father.

Robin pulls the pillow over her head to drown out the voices and cries until she falls asleep, the bitter taste of loss far too potent for just a scrapbook.

\---

Robin wakes up again to the sound of the alarm. 

She sees the tearstains on her hands as she lifts them off of her eyes. She’s still tired, and emotionally, she is steeled. That, or utterly drained. 

She’s impatient as she goes through her routine, taking care to wash every tear stain off of her body. There’s no use in looking compromised, so she takes extra care into her presentation. 

As soon as she’s done, she goes to call lost and found before remembering that important numbers were on the notepad. She tries not to lose herself to the voices in her head again, but they begin to beat her down. 

She hears a new voice.  _ I’m just glad you’re here at all.  _

She takes advantage of the complimentary voice and prepares to leave. Awe towards the fact that it exists washes over her, but she forces herself to keep focus. She does, leaving her apartment and retracing the classrooms that she took yesterday. It’s just before any of the classes start, though the last class did start after she entered the room and she quietly excused herself as it began, leaving a lab table looking windstruck. 

All of those being dead ends make her think. Tuesday always held those classes. The ones she takes with Sumia are on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and today is Wednesday. The memory of it being on her person seems like it came from yesterday, so she didn’t lose it at P.E. in the locker room. The only thing that she can think of is going by the lost and found. After that… shit…

Best not to think that far ahead.

She goes down the main corridor towards the entrance where the map of the campus she committed to memory says that the lost and found is. She’s holding back from a brisk sprint as she would prefer, still jogging past all sorts of different people. She keeps near-missing a few of them, and they call out sarcastic thanks and obscenities about her. Robin doesn’t care. She stopped caring awhile back. 

She  _ does  _ start caring when she runs into someone, however. 

There’s a dull thud on her skull as she grasps this mystery person to keep from falling. They’re not up against a wall, so it doesn’t work and they both fall into two separate yet attached clumps on the floor. Robin nurses her aching head. She’s probably gonna have to tell the doctors about this. Then, she looks over to her side, thinking about how she feels like she’s as clumsy as Sumia when she sees Sumia. 

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, back towards Robin.

“No, no, don’t be.”

She gasps. “Robin?”

She pulls Sumia to a sitting position. “This was my fault,” she swears. A passerby asks if they’re okay and Sumia has to assure them that they are in a way that implies weary familiarity. Sumia guides them both to a nearby bench, but Robin says “I have to go.”

Before she can walk off, Sumia grabs her arm. “Class doesn’t start for thirty minutes.” With a triumphant grin, she adds “I checked!” Easing up, she says “You can rest your head a little.”

“I  _ can’t,  _ actually,” Robin insists forcefully. “I lost something. Please let me go.” 

Sumia looks concerned already. And she’s gonna tell Robin not to worry about her! “Was it an important thing?” 

“It was my notepad.” Sumia thinks for a second, and Robin starts to get irritated. “I gotta find it.”

“If it’s in the lost and found, then it’s not going anywhere,” Sumia insists. “And you hit your head pretty hard there. You need to rest a little.”

“I’m fine.” Robin shakes her head, though she is surprised that she isn’t feeling a thing. “And you don’t, you don't, you don't understand. It’s like my, my whole life in there. I keep a lot of notes. And I just- I just-” 

She starts to walk away, Sumia hanging onto her forearm. “What are you  _ doing,  _ Robin?” 

Robin looks back. “What the hell?!”

“You’re gonna hurt yourself!” she insists, a lot of bite in her voice. “I’m just trying to look out for you!”

“You’re going-  _ going _ to  _ yank _ my arm off!” Robin looks around at staring passerby. “Oh, gods damn it, we’re making a scene!” she yells, angry. 

“You’re  _ not  _ okay,” Sumia says, stonefaced. 

“How did my being okay enter this pic- picture?”

“Because you’re upset! You’re upset and it’s not normal.” 

Robin doesn’t have a response. Sumia isn’t lying. It’s just that Robin doesn’t want to tell her the truth. She doesn’t want to disappoint her.

“Just let me go,” she begs.

Sumia loosens her grip around Robin’s arm and Robin jerks away. “Look, Robin,” she says. “I know that if they’re class notes, they can wait for you to rest a little. But…” 

She’s figured Robin out. 

“Those aren’t just notes, are they?”

Robin sighs. A sob shakes her, but she brute-forces it from progressing. The wave of anxiety returns, less painful than before. It holds her hostage but forces her stillness at the same time. Not just of body, but of mind. She’s not going to get any better than this for a while.

She looks at Sumia. Sumia seems really concerned about her. Can she trust Sumia? What if Robin tells her and she fades out of her life for good, drifting from her grasp piece by piece? But she’s gotta learn sometime. Robin thought she could work around herself even though she desperately needs someone to work with her instead. Robin can’t. Robin needs someone, and this is as good a chance as any to involve a friend. 

“I need…” Robin doesn’t say anything to follow up. “Just… walk with me outside, okay?” After a pause: “I just need somewhere where the only person who can hear me is you.”

Sumia looks ever so slightly bewildered but does her best to recover. “Uhm, sure, I guess.”

“Thank you.” The words are heavy as iron then light as a feather. She takes Sumia’s hand, allowing Sumia to hold onto her with the hopes that she doesn’t drag her away. That’s the kind of trust that she’s going to need. 

\---

Sumia insists that they sit under the first tree near the proximity line so Robin can rest her head. When she sits down, she is dizzy and reminded of how weak she is. She rests on Sumia’s shoulder and wakes up, her insides shaky in a manner that tempts her to cry. 

“How…" 

Too long passes.

"How long was I out?” 

“Only thirty minutes, I think.” 

That’s enough for the dam to break.

Sumia tries to convince Robin that it’s okay to miss class when she keeps tearfully apologizing for making them both miss Frederick’s. Maybe that’s the case, but it’s all Robin’s fault that she dragged Sumia into this. These are the consequences of her actions, and all she can do is accept them until she stops messing everything up.

“It’s okay, Robin,” Sumia repeats. At some point, she’d think that what Robin meant to reveal would be more important than calming her down, right? But Robin cannot speak for a few minutes after she stops crying, shivering as Sumia wraps an arm around her back and places it on her stomach, holding but not gripping. She leans into Sumia’s neck out of desperation, not even realizing how nice it feels. She just breathes and keeps wishing that she wasn’t doing this. 

“I think… I think I can tell you,” she says at long last, gasping from a sob.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

She’s as ready as she’ll ever be.

She talks about her memory problems. She talks about her injury and where it came from. About the most important memories regarding it all. How she does her best to maneuver around it. How the notepad was how she kept track of not only what she learned, but what she needed to know. How she can’t believe she lost it. How she’s worried that she’ll forget everything now. 

“I don’t think you will,” Sumia responds matter-of-factly. “If you do things enough times, they’ll be ingrained within you.” She thinks for a moment. “Like, I don’t mean totally don’t do notepads anymore, though! I just think… you’re smart enough to get it, you know. I mean, you remember me pretty well. Enough to be my friend, you know.”

“That’s different,” Robin argues before she can help herself.

“I’m not really sure how?” The response is slow and confused. 

“You’re…” She stops to think. She’s this close to confessing but now isn’t the time. Besides, she still isn’t even sure that she  _ should.  _ “I don’t have many friends. I can’t keep them. They’re…” She thinks for a second more. “They’re like Cordelia when I try to talk to them. So I stop bothering them.”

Robin feels Sumia’s chin lean atop her head. “I’m so sorry,” she breathes, though she might have seethed. “They’re missing out.”

“I’m not sure,” Robin admits. “Look at today. I’m way too… specific. And intense. And I don’t handle things not going my way. I… panic. And you have to, to drag me over to a tree so I can calm down and then I feel bad for doing this to you.”

Sumia shakes her head. “Robin, it’s okay.”

“I just… I just try not to be this way. But I can’t, I can’t help it.” A new level of panic starts to creep in. She manages it by trying to keep her lungs steady even as she talks. “And now that I told you about, about… about  _ me,  _ I feel like… like logically, I should have scared you logically.”

Blankly: “How come? Like, what am I missing?”

“Because, Sumia!’ Her voice rises and Sumia looks close to jumping. “Because I’m so, so angry! Like, you, you flinched there, and that’s what… what you should do.” As quickly as it raised, it lowers. “You’d have to deal… deal with me doing thing... things to cope. Risk me forgetting things. Have to… have to help me all the time, all for someone who’s… just an idiot sometimes. An idiot.” 

Sumia places her hand on Robin’s. “Robin, breathe,” she says gently. “Breathe. None of this is as bad as you think it is. You're not as bad as you think you are. Even if it feels like it.”

“It feels  _ so  _ bad.”

“I know. But I  _ promise _ that it’s not.”

Robin breathes in and breathes out. The entire time, Sumia doesn’t let her go. 

“Don’t ever think that there’s no one in the world that wouldn’t help you, Robin. Okay? I, uh…” Now she’s thinking. If Robin didn’t feel so nice in her arms she would have looked up at her. “I know what it’s like to feel low. And I know what it’s like to need help. And I really know what it’s like to think that nobody should help me because it would bother them. And I don’t want you to ever feel like you don’t deserve help.”

Robin takes in her words. Well, she tries to, but she can’t. She can’t get them past the censors that eat them up in live time in a locust storm of disapproval. She’s not strong enough. All she can do is bow her head and say “What I did, the accident, led to this, so I deserve it. I can’t argue that. I just have to accept it.”

“But that’s not true, Robin!” 

Robin finally looks up at Sumia. She’s surprised and guilty that she’s so upset. “I’m sorry.”

Sumia’s tensed in the meantime, she notices. “I just… that’s not true that you deserved it. Like, maybe everything is fate. Maybe just some things are out of our control, you know?” She sighs, dissatisfied at her own points enough that Robin doesn’t counter them. “Look, I’m just one girl. I don’t have all the answers. No one does. So I’m not always sure of what is certain and what’s not. I just… know that no one deserves to deal with the trauma from an accident. It just happens. And it happens to good people sometimes. People like you.”

“Like... me?”

Sumia nods. 

Robin pinches her nose with her free hand. “This is so much. It’s making me spin.” After a beat- “Metaphorically.”

Sumia closes her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I bet. I, uh…” She doesn’t continue that thought. “Just… even if you can’t really accept everything, just accept that you’re a good person, okay? You’re strong, you’re smart, you’ve got a whole system in place that keeps you functioning. You never give up when you are  _ totally _ within your rights to do so. Start a new path. And yet… you’re still here and… honestly, I’m just glad you are at all.” 

Robin tears up. “Of course I would be, Sumia. Of course! Don’t worry. This is my path.”

“Then you’re gonna be fine.”

A few seconds pass. “We definitely, definitely missed the class,” Robin points out. “And my head hurts. You were right.”

Sumia shrugs. “Let’s just relax for a while then. We have time.”

“Do we?”

Sumia pushes Robin a little further into the crook of her arm like a good book. Robin takes extra special care not to lay her hands on her bosom, red as can be. 

“We can make time.”

Robin can’t argue with that.


	6. "Seriously, It's Nothing."

Robin wakes up for the first time after her notebook is gone. It wasn’t at lost and found, and while Sumia took Robin on a walk around the perimeter “like we did yesterday” (which helped Robin place a set-piece behind the amazing feelings she had gotten then) they had no such luck. In her second class, Robin took a few sheets of notebook paper from a helpful white-haired classmate who had a cheerful smile and tore a couple of sheets a little, not that Robin minded. She made sure to put them in a special place when she returned to her room so they wouldn’t be lost or damaged.

She hadn’t seen Sumia for the rest of the day after their walk. Sumia said that she was gonna be busy for a day after because she would be caught up in a rush of things to do. That sounded fair- they were halfway through the term and it was only going to get harder from there. Robin figured that she’d try to catch her on the terrace of the cafe, as usual, now a  _ location  _ in her mind rather than a convenient stop, a few lines on a map. Maybe she should have asked for her phone number so they could communicate whenever, but ever since Sumia accepted her, Robin’s actually been more hesitant about pushing her. She’s in a phase where she wants to believe that Sumia will be there for her, but Sumia has to prove it. 

At this point, Sumia isn’t someone Robin remembers shallowly or is surprised to remember at all. Sumia is her friend. She is definitely something more to Robin, but she is definitely a friend. She’s beyond a hallway acquaintance like she would imagine Cordelia to be or the boy who gave her notebook paper. She’s a little more than a friend that texts her often to shoot the shit like Sully. She’s not quite a friend like Chrom is, but she’s never had a friend like Chrom. Sumia is a presence and one that Robin’s infinitely glad to have. Yet she is very much more than that. 

Robin clears her eyes out and begins the routine. She’s not used to stepping on unsteady ground, but between the notebook, the girl, and never knowing if she’s getting better or not, unsteady is all that she has. 

\---

It’s not until the next day that Sumia catches her. It’s Friday, a day of their classes together, so Robin couldn’t avoid Sumia even if she wanted to. Her book bag seems a little more full, which generally happens after a visit to the library. Sometimes they go together, but Sumia basically lives there. As much as Robin lives for her presence, she can settle for moments where they aren't together. Jealous people are weird to her. The closest she gets is disappointment, but even at its worse it never evolves to a state where she feels like she especially  _ deserves _ to have anything. 

The class ends and Frederick wishes everyone a lovely weekend, reminding them that the third quarterly exam is coming up next week. Robin realizes that she forgot that. Aggravated, she writes it down on a new notepad under the other notes. 

Sumia is the one to walk to her this time. Setting her own large, dog-eared notebook on the desk Robin is sitting at, she announces “I got it all down! No egg on the face of this lass in lace!”

Robin quickly scans her. “You’re not wearing lace.” 

Sumia giggles a little. Robin realizes that it was an expression. Either way, Sumia takes a seat next to her. Robin feels something off in her rhythm and could swear that she’s breathing a little staccato, but isn’t sure why- or isn’t sure if she should worry. 

“How are you doing with everything?” she asks casually. 

“Doing my best.” Robin stuffs her notepad into her book bag. “I’m considering just having a take-and-go notepad and… and another, an at-home notepad. I didn’t because it would mean I would write a lot twice, but I think at this point, it’s, it's better.”

Sumia snaps her fingers. “Two separate notepads,” she whispers, awed. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

Robin beams. “It’s not your concern, really, it’s mine.” After a second, she reminds herself to say “thanks, though.”

Sumia just nods. “What do you need to jot down? Anything important?”

Robin narrows her eyes. “I didn’t expect you to be so interested.”

“You don’t have to tell me  _ anything, _ ” Sumia says, eyes widened and palms out. “Just wanna put that out there if that’s too touchy or invasive-y.”

It’s not as invasive as it could have been, but Robin still feels a gurgle in her stomach at the things that she is glad that Sumia never saw and never will see. 

So she keeps it rather uninvolved. “A lot of it is just the names of doctors and teachers if I can remember to put them down. Of locations and phone numbers. A ton of notes from school. When I read them after a class I make more notes. Sometimes... I use it to goof off. I write down summaries of books I’ve read and what stands out.” 

She closes her eyes. “On the side that I feel… bad about…” 

She sighs. When she feels a hand on her shoulder, she sighs again. 

“I have to, have to write down the obvious. Events that happened. Friends I have, and why they matter. Little cheat-sheets as to what they like and what we, what we did together. Memories…” she swallows. “Memories that we made. That I suddenly remember. Sometimes… things about me. So I don’t forget. I don’t want to forget, and others… don’t deserve to be forgotten.” Her voice is tiny. 

“That’s smart,” Sumia reassures her. “It’s best to be thorough.” 

“I should  _ know  _ this.” Robin remembers where she is and takes a couple of deep breaths. “I got careless. I deleted some notes from my phone to make space when I… I transcribed it. I didn’t always reread the ones that I forgot. If I forget things it’s because of the mistakes I've made, and I have to accept that.”

“Don’t think like that, Robin.” Sumia taps her shoulder sternly. “I mean it.”

Even though she knows she’ll fail, she says “I’ll try.” 

“Good.” That’s all Sumia says, and that’s really all there is to say. 

\---

The next day is divided in half. There are generally no classes on Saturday and Physical Education only takes up a couple of hours. She wonders if she’ll see Sully there today. She TAs there occasionally, though she can generally be found assisting with more specific training. Sure enough, she isn’t there.

Neither is Sumia, for that matter. 

That’s concerning. Not only is Sumia always there, but Sumia makes sure she is there and giving a hundred and fifty percent, which is about fifty percent more than she needs to. Maybe she’s sick. Robin would call or visit to see, but she doesn’t know her phone number or room location. Did she ever? 

No matter. Robin goes through the motions like someone who never went through a major accident. One could certainly be fooled into never thinking that she had on the surface. After class, she cleans up in the locker room and takes a breather. She’s proud of herself for doing so well but knows that it is only so much. She  _ has  _ to get better at memory or there’s no hope for her. Imagine not being able to remember orders, the basics of the equipment used, or even how to dress and behav-

Robin makes herself stop thinking of that. It’s not a good time to leave her alone in her thoughts. 

So she leaves. 

And she encounters Sumia soon after. 

“Hey, wait up!” As soon as Robin passes the mess hall, she hears her. Swiveling her head so hard that she gets a little dizzy, she notices Sumia walking towards her, hand up and bookbag on her person. 

“Sumia!” Robin waits for her. “You weren’t at P.E.?”

Sumia nods, a sour look on her face. “I’m playing hooky way too much lately. I’m gonna get an earful for it. I just told ‘em I was sick, so we should probably vamoose.” 

The two walk quickly down the hall, Robin hissing “I can’t believe it. You’d die before missing P.E.” 

“I  _ know, _ ” Sumia moans. “I just got really caught up in finishing a personal project. Uhm, sorry for making you hurry, by the way. I just- hey, do you wanna just go outside for this?”

The hall breaks into the big opening foyer by the lost and found. “No one’s gonna catch you?”

“I don’t… think so?”

“You were way too slow on that for me to feel convinced.” Though Robin isn’t sure where else they should go. Probably not her room (probably), and most certainly not Sumia’s without her okay. Maybe outside is their best option. 

As if to seal the deal, Sumia says “I, uh… I have something for you.”

“What?” Maybe that’s not the right response to something like this, but Robin’s too confounded to care. “I, uh- okay. I mean, thanks, I just…”

Sumia takes a step closer to Robin. “Look, I know you said something about wanting to tell me something under trees like the ones out there, right?”

Robin nods blankly. It’s unbearable how tight her chest feels right now, to the point where she has to force her own breaths. “Y-yeah, that was… I did that, sort of. The day I lost my notes. It was weird.”

“I figured that was it. I just also figured…” Suddenly, she’s embarrassed. Robin isn’t sure how the hell she became the embarrassed one. “Well, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I stole that idea.” She meets her eyes; gods, she’s tall. “Do you?”

Robin makes herself smile, but as she does, she doesn’t feel like she needs to make herself anymore. 

\---

_ The group crosses the makeshift bridge across the shallow creek. Well,  _ makeshift  _ was pushing it. It turns out that Vaike literally pushed a few planks of wood and promised everyone that they would have a bridge. Sully glares at him, a little soaked. “Look, when you said you made a bridge I didn’t exactly expect the bridge of the gods, but I expected a  _ bridge. _ ” _

_ “Aw, c’mon! Teach did the best he could with what he had!” _

_ Sully scowls. “Come on, dude, those were giant wooden lily pads.” Shivering: “These hot springs better be worth of it. Or did someone fuck that up too?” _

_ Chrom chuckles. “I checked a million maps before the trip out here. Trust me, there’s one here. Why else would Vaike know to build a bridge?” _

_ “Did he though?” Robin asks quietly. It’s unheard. _

_ Sully's hands are on her hips. “Har! Vaike would do anything you asked him to. You could have told him the Deadlords were on the other side and he would have still tried to make a bridge.” _

_ Lissa slaps her chest. “Hey, I would have too!” _

_ Robin giggles, gently thwapping one of Lissa’s stalky pigtails. “Oh, I’m well aware.”  _

_ Lissa giggles affectionately. "At least you know." _

_ Vaike gags. Sully slaps him far less tenderly and calls him an asshole.  _

_ “Too bad we couldn’t convince Maribelle to come along,” Lissa muses. “She went on some rant about how we can't help but get into filthy, messy trouble and just couldn’t do things that normal teens do like use their phones and not talk to anyone." _

_ "Maribelle?" Robin asks, surprised. _

_ "Yeah,  _ Maribelle. _ ” _

_ "She doesn't even  _ have _a phone!" Robin protests. Maribelle never ceases to surprise, amaze, and confuse her._

_ Vaike cracks up. “She actually think she knows anything about being a normal teen? What a bozo!” _

_ “A  _ bozo _ ?” Robin gives Chrom a pleading look, as if to say  _ please stop falling for this idiot.  _ With a toothy grin, Chrom reads it in a way that says  _ too late.

_ Sully laughs. “Shame, she probably fills out a bikini really well.” _

_ “Shut the fuck up,” Lissa responds fiercely. There’s no blush on her face, but there’s steam out of her ears.  _

_ “I’m just fuckin’ with ya, bite-size.”  _

_ “I know! That’s the worst part!” _

_ Chrom clears his throat. “As riveting as this all is, do we have any idea of where Cordelia and Sumia are?” _

_ “They should be just a bit behind,” Vaike notes. “Cord said she’d stay with Sumes ‘cause she kept tripping an’ all.” _

_ "Wow, we..." Robin looks around. “That was actually kind of crap of us, in retrospect.”  _

_ Sully shrugs. “I mean, I love Sumi, but she knows that she’s slow and clumsy. Cord’s got the patience of a saint to deal with that.” _

_ “Or a best friend,” Lissa interjects. “I think it’s nice.” With a grimace: “Think this is gonna be the last time that Cordie wants to hang out with us.” _

_ Robin closes her eyes. It probably would be. It should be. They’re not very good to her best friend. Even if she does have trouble walking, it’s clear that they don’t really treat Sumia as an equal. Robin supposes Sumia’s self-consciousness gives everyone permission to do that, but it kind of makes Robin sad to hear Sumia use her weight, awkwardness, and clumsiness as joke fodder. It feels more like a defense mechanism, to insult herself before someone else does.  _

_ “I’m gonna go back and check on her.” _

_ Sully scoffs. “You’re crossing that bridge again?”  _

_ Robin shrugs. “May as well. If I get wet, I get wet. I’m doing that anyway later.” _

_ Sully looks at Lissa and wolf-whistles. Robin rolls her eyes as she prepares to go. _

_ "I know what you're gonna say," Lissa warns. "And seriously, shut the fuck up." _

_ Before anyone else wastes their breath, Robin starts to stalk across the boards. They’re uneven and Robin takes the time to straighten them. Lord knows that Sumia will need them to be. Still, it takes no effort for her cross them, or to flash Sully a cheeky little smile that is met with a sarcastic laugh and middle finger. Then, she turns around the bend, out of sight.  _

_ Sumia and Cordelia are not too far away. Sumia smiles accommodatingly, already bearing a few scratches and bruises. Cordelia tries not to look too cross but fails miserably.  _

_ “Hi, Robin!” Sumia says, eyes down as usual- not that Robin has ever been good at eye contact either. “Is everything okay?”  _

_ Robin shrugs. “You know that bridge Vaike said he built?” Sumia nods. “Yeah. Yeah, you’ll probably need a hand across that.” _

_ “I supposed,” Cordelia responds, maintaining her composure. “That’s why I accompanied her.” _

_ Robin responds with a cool smile. “Thanks for that, by the way. We’re definitely gonna need your help with that. A, uh…” She shrugs. “A set of hands for the hands.” _

_ Cordelia nods. “Understood.” _

_ Robin looks at Sumia. “If you’re all good, I can piggyback you across the creek. It’s messy as hell. Cord, just walk behind us and make sure we don't fall, okay?” _

_ Sumia’s eyes widen and she meets Robin’s gaze. “Are you sure?” _

_ “Course I’m sure.”  _

_ She beams. “Thank you, Robin!” _

_ "I can do that," Cordelia confirms icily, but it melts a little when she repeats "I can do that." _

_ Robin nods with a smile. Truth be told, she’s a little surprised that Sumia always seems so grateful towards her when she helps. Maybe it’s out of surprise; the others are bad at keeping pace with her and even Robin falters a lot, which probably explains how Cordelia is so very over them. Other than Cordelia and Maribelle, Sumia is probably the member of her friend group that she knows the least. She’s fourteen to Robin’s seventeen, and Robin is one of the younger ones there. She also has a hard time ingratiating herself due to childhood illnesses that have affected her motor skills, and sometimes Robin feels like she’s pitying that too much. Still, Sumia is a good person with a good attitude and deserves to be treated with respect.  _

_ She scratches the back of her neck. “Seriously, it’s nothing.”  _

_ Sumia still beams in a way that says that Robin is wrong. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not sure what i will do for later chapters. they could be their own story at times. I am not as far along as I want to be due to a lot of things, but I can at least tie up a single part and make yall wait on the sequel hahaha.


	7. "I think of stuff like this. Not your mistakes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very much confused. There are plot points and scenarios that I want to address down the line as well as some four chapters after this that I have written; at the same time, I am gassed for motivation and cannot decide which way I want the story to go. So for now, it pauses here.

Robin wakes up and everything has changed. 

The first thing she does is check her phone. There are no texts from Sully or anyone. She isn’t sure if she expected one from Sumia, but in her mind-boggled state, she didn’t remember to text her to give her own back. Gods, that’s a dumb move. 

After that, she goes to prepare herself for the routine but then realizes it’s Sunday. It’s past her alarm and she has time. She can relax.

But she can’t. 

She can’t at all. 

She gets out her notepad. All of her class notes from Frederick’s are first on the page. She flips through them only to realize that she has the wrong notepad. Both have the transcribed notes from his class, so she grabs the second, one with flowers on the cover rather than the generic black-and-white covers that she always gets.

She opens it and bypasses the first page with all the numbers and addresses and the actually-well-sketched map of the campus. It was probably copied from a brochure, but the cute designs and occasional sketch were not. A little too quickly, she writes down her doctor’s name and number from her cellphone, then Sully’s (surprised that it isn’t there already). 

The class notes are all the same, so she skips them. They really should have been photocopied. A few empty pages later, Robin gets to a new summary of the book she just read. They aren’t all her thoughts and they miss a few of the things that she hit but she can fill those in- and does while she remembers. Besides, they remember a few things that she herself missed- and the illustrations are divine. 

She turns the next page and it is all about Sumia. 

It’s nothing intricate, but it’s her essential details. Her last name (Hansen), her birthdate (November twenty-third, so coming up), her age (twenty-three going on twenty-four), her favorite foods (probably so Robin never tries to feed her juice-stained salad again), a list of her favorite books (which Robin takes as recommendations), and a few recreational activities that she loves (which kind of makes it feel like birthday hints, but she would likely have asked anyways). She finishes with her ultimate goals and aspirations (the air force bit hurts more than it did the first time, but Robin shrugs it off). 

Below, there’s a bit of backstory, illustrations aplenty. 

_ “You and I were both part of Chrom’s friends. (So was Cordelia!)” A drawing of a group of stick people together. “And so were his little sister Lissa- you two dated for a minute- Sully, Vaike- his husband!” A drawing of two bells. “And Maribelle was… a friend of the friends, I guess?? We had Stahl too but he moved overseas early on.” _

_ It sounds like she’s talking, not writing.  _

_ “It felt so often like it was Chrom, Sully, Vaike, Lissa, and you, and the subgroup was me, Cordelia, and Maribelle. But I remember that you were always the bridge. You would cross over and help me when I needed it. You would check on me when I was struggling. I never forgot that.  _

_ “I had a developmental coordination disorder when I was a kid, and even when I was able to get past it, I still wasn’t great. I’m still not great.” Cartoonish drawing of her falling over, papers in the air. “It meant a lot that you didn’t take it for granted. Take me for granted. _

_ “Anyway, I heard about the accident. I visited a few times after it happened but you probably don’t remember.” (She doesn’t specify what happened. Robin’s oddly grateful for that.) “By then, though, I’d kind of drifted away from Chrom and everyone except for Cordelia. We hadn’t spoken for about a year.  _

_ “I didn’t join the academy for a while. The spring was my first term.” Flowers across a big building. “You had nearly graduated when the accident happened and I guess joined this fall.” Sumia was right. Robin spent a lot of the first few years after the accident holed up at home with her cousin, Aversa. She barely interacted with everyone.  _

_ “It took me a bit to recognize you, but I did!” A rough drawing of Robin’s face with pigtails behind her. “I don’t know if you remember that we’d met up a couple of times before we started hanging out more. I think I was surprised to see you there. That you were there at all. But I was  _ ** _so _ ** _ happy!” That explains why, even as she forgot Sumia, she still felt warmly towards her. “I was so surprised you were here I even had to ask your name a few times. I thought I was losing it! _

_ “I hope this helps! Sorry for dropping all of this on you. I just didn’t want to let you forget. And I wasn’t sure when to tell you. It probably didn’t mean much to you, but to me, it meant the world.” _

_ A large drawing of a heart, and a few digits that Robin knew indicated a phone number. “For if you want to know anything else!” _

_ Robin covers her mouth, crying. She doesn’t have words. She might possibly never have words.  _

_ An errant leaf falls now and again, a breeze carrying it past the two women on the cobblestone walkway.  _

_ She turns to her friend. “Sumia!” Without a word of warning, she hugs her so hard they stumble a step or two back.  _

_ A short giggle between every word, Sumia responds “Whoa! I may have gotten better but you’re still...” It’s no use. She gets lost in the giggle zone.  _

_ Robin doesn’t mind. She’s crying too much to know what to say. This is the kindest thing that was ever done to her, and it was done by the greatest, most amazing, most interesting, most beautiful woman she knows. No matter how much Sumia thinks Robin has helped her, this feels like so much, like far too much payback. Her friendship feels like far too much payback. Maybe it’s surpassed that. Maybe they’re just… friends. But it feels like far too great a reward.  _

_ Sumia strokes her hair, a hand in the pigtails that Robin sports. “I just… can I say something?”  _

_ Helpless, Robin nods, still crying into Sumia’s uniform.  _

_ “I just…” Sumia thinks. Robin realizes that it’s more than visible, but a shift in her whole body. “I think that… it really hurts to hear you say that you deserved everything because of the accident. That’s not fair to you. I think that the things that matter… they’re intentional. The things that you deserve, even if then because people are so…” She swallows. “I think that when you say you deserve the things you have because of what you’ve done…” _

_ Robin looks up at her as she breathes. The next few words are taking a lot out of her. Robin wants to tell her to stop but reckons that she shouldn’t.  _

_ “I think of stuff like… this. Not your mistakes.” _

_ Robin loves her. That hits her harder than anything has hit her, so hard that she grips Sumia’s shoulders as a wave washes over, but instead of the cold callousness of anxiety, it’s a warm and gentle sea that she wants to drown in.  _

_ “This is…” Robin chokes on her tears again. “Th-the nicest, nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me. I mean it. I really do, Sumia, thank you so, so much. So much.” She cries again. She can’t remember the last time she was so overcome with positive emotion. Not since the accident, at least. Part of her is still in survival mode, and this may be the way out.  _

_ “I’m so glad we met again,” Sumia responds. “I’m so glad.” _

_ Robin’s glad that they’re both there at all.  _

_ \--- _

Robin dials the number into her texting app. 

_ Did yesterday happen? _

_ Not that I forgot it. _

_ I just can’t believe it.  _

The minute she spends waiting is painstaking. Maybe Sumia’s asleep. Robin’s certainly tired from all of the emotions.

Her phone vibrates. 

_ Good morning, silly!  _

Robin promptly saves her in her contacts under “Sumia <3”. 


	8. “There’s never been a moment I’ve spent with you that I regret.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here is the tea: i will give you the sort of cliffhangery "transition chapter" and end it there just so i can move on. i am SO proud of this. but i got stuck on a sequel
> 
> this helped me unravel the extent of my own brain damage and memory loss after cancer, and that was very life changing

Robin likes to think of herself as someone who is either always prepared or someone who can easily get prepared. Sure, in reality, her ability to prepare is as reliable as a half-burnt hotel vacancy sign flashing NO at inappropriate times, but the last vestiges burn once she sees Sumia in her civvies next Sunday because she has  _ zero clue  _ what to do with the fact that she is so beautiful.

She always knew that Sumia was beautiful. It was just a fact. Kinda like Vaike being a dumbass loving dumbass (she loves Chrom, but he  _ has  _ to know how true that is), it was just a fact, like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Sumia was beautiful in her uniform with her long bunned-up hair, and she was beautiful in her tank top and shorts. (Okay, maybe a little more than  _ beautiful. _ ) 

Still, it’s something else entirely to see her… unbound. Exactly as who she wants to be. 

She wears a long rippled skirt- light blue- and a loose-knit white cardigan. Her hair is down, and it’s in the kind of silky shape that implies that she tried a little. It reaches down to her waist and Robin has to look away a few times so Sumia does not see her utter awe. Luckily, she’s never been great at eye contact. 

In contrast, Robin’s wearing skinny jeans with a couple of rips (not that she’s got a lot of options) and a large brown overcoat that she used to wear all the time. She showered and did a little haircare and perfume, but she’s so clearly outshone. “If I’d have known that we were dressing so nicely, I’d have probably gone a little differently,” she admits, looking at the cobblestone of the terrace. 

“Pssh, you look fine,” Sumia insists. Robin is fine with looking fine but considering she’s next to Sumia,  _ outclassed  _ doesn’t even begin to cut it. “This is just stuff I pulled out of my closet. Basically, all of my wardrobe is better.”

The thought never went through Robin’s brain that Sumia had nicer clothes than these, but now that it has, she has to put a little effort to keep from getting lightheaded. Sumia getting prettier and prettier is a scary concept indeed. 

Robin shakes the thoughts out of her head and asks “You’re gonna, uh, gonna be fine, right? Still slick outside.” Then she grimaces. She’s been asking about her dexterity more and more since she found out the truth, and while her intent is to be helpful, she feels like she’s playing right into the kind of perception of Sumia’s skills that led to her ostracization. Quietly, she apologizes. 

Sumia smiles sadly. “Thank you.” Robin prefers that over her brushing it off. For little things, she tends to do that, but ever since they talked Sumia’s had a little more of a backbone and Robin appreciates that. “Besides, my uniform skirt is generally pretty tight. I just don’t let it get in my way.” 

“That’s good.” She always liked the skirt. This one’s better, though. 

Sumia holds her arm out, finally cognizant of the fact that she’s the taller one. “Anyway, you wanna get out of here?”

Robin takes it. “That sounds like the best idea I’ve ever heard.”

\---

Ever since Sumia confessed to Robin, a lot of her memories have become clearer. It isn’t perfect. It’ll never be. It won’t ever be even to the point of a normal person’s flawed memory. At most, she gets a non-chronologic outline of things in her life. She knows that her dad wasn’t good to her. She knows what it’s like to be lonely and gay. She knows that Chrom is her best friend and they were set to graduate together. (Gods above, she misses Chrom.) She knows Sully was a friend from the before times. She knows that she dated Chrom’s sister for a hot minute (and that her feelings towards Lissa are still decent, hinting at a mild breakup). 

Then Sumia came in and burst the dam open. 

It’s not perfect, but she  _ is  _ starting to remember the friend group that she was in. Her only friends. Friends that she had to sneak out to visit until she turned eighteen. Her father hated her going out. She was weird. She was gay. His daughter was going to do nothing but corrupt and cheapen the hollow shell of a person that she was.

Something broke. She knows that.

Then after that… she knew Chrom helped her. Chrom was wealthy, she was not. Then there’s a gap between that time and school where things at least have an outline until the accident. 

She remembers the ones she still knows better. She remembers Vaike always softening up around Chrom, which is probably why she feels a bit of warmth towards him now despite him being an ass. She remembers that Lissa was just… fun personified, but she thinks of a hypothetical Lissa now and comes up empty. Sully… gods, Robin’s so happy she’s her friend. The others… well, Sumia is obviously covered. Maribelle, Robin is unsure why she ever associated with them, though she’s connected with Lissa somehow. Cordelia, Robin is pretty certain as to why she no longer associates with the vast majority of them. 

Robin loves her friend group, but she sees why they were flawed. 

The proof in that was in how they didn’t fully appreciate Sumia. 

Sumia opens the coffeeshop door for Robin. “Such a gentlewoman,” Robin teases. It’s the best way to get her feelings across without looking like a creep. Or feeling like one, at least. 

Sumia shoves her lightly. “Goober.” She stumbles a little as she does, but catches herself. “Hup! Oh, thank goodness.”

“And  _ I’m  _ the goober?” 

Sumia giggles. “We can both be goobers, you little stink.”

Robin blushes and brushes a bit of hair behind her head. To change the subject: “It’s not often I get off campus at all, you know? I usually spend Sundays in my room. Something always distracts me from whatever it is I mean to spend my leisure time on.”

“Then I’m glad you can get some fresh air!” 

Robin beams, finding an empty table and sitting down. Sumia notices and says “Oh, should I make the order then?”

Oh, that’s right. One orders at the counter at coffeeshops. “Uhm.” Robin goes beet red and gets up. Plucking her card out of her wallet, she leaves her purse and overcoat on the seat to claim the table, leaving a nice white button-up over her cut-up jeans. It doesn’t match, but she notices Sumia looking at her for too long. 

Robin meets her eyes with a cheeky grin. “I... meant to do that.”

Sumia just giggles. 

_ Robin is not always wise in the ways of the heart. Neither is Chrom, but she’s always known her flaws and where they come from. A big flaw comes from the fact that Robin cannot see herself as anything more than platonically likable at best. She isn’t sure why someone amazing like Chrom bonded with her as a best friend. She isn’t sure why Lissa dated her at all (and certainly can’t imagine that she had any other partners). She isn’t used to being… wooed.  _

_ It takes someone like Sully to snap her to her senses.  _

I’ve had a crazy few days lately. 

_ She lies on her side, blanket over her. She’s kind of sleepy, but she figures that she should at least get her thoughts out.  _

that IS big news. youre so damn routiney.

I’ll allow that. 

so what i’m saying is i’m dead curious. what’s up, robbie

_ Robin tries to think of how to word it, but damn it, she runs on a grand total of three brain cells at this time of night, so she just goes for it.  _

Remember Sumia?

She’s my friend at the academy. 

Or is again. 

_ A few seconds go by.  _

sumia? yeah, we still talk when she passes by. think i underestimated how nice she was when we were all kiddos

I feel like we all did. 

wait wait. brain blast. u REMEMBER sumia???

_ Maybe Robin should have started with that. Again, three brain cells. Feels like two now. _

_ Sully always gets more expressive and less grammatically correct when she’s excited. Robin thinks of ways to rein her in while still telling the truth and comes up short.  _

_ That’s Sully for you. _

Yeah. She’s a good friend at this academy. Fun to talk to, helpful, and just… nice.

ffffffuck me dead in the fkin road

i cant believe u just

REMEMBERED HER

It wasn’t all my mind’s doing. We were friends for a bit before she helped jog my memory.

She told you?

_ No, she didn’t just tell Robin. Robin thinks of the kindness she did, still fresh in her mind. Then she starts crying again, covering the bottom of her eyes with the blanket. _

It was amazing of her. I think I told you about the notepad I carry around, right? 

yea i think

im on the edge of my seat robbie

I ended up losing it somewhere. I don’t know where. I told Sumia about this, and she did her best to recreate it. It was a great kindness from her and I’m still a little shocked to be honest. 

She knew what was in it?

She guessed. She was generally right. A lot of class notes and general notes and numbers. Some frivolous stuff like notes on books we both read and a bit of a bio on her, so things she liked and did. Then last she put a little bit on our history together and why Sumia remembered me too. Why she wanted me to remember her. Then her phone number if I wanted to remember more of my past. 

_ When Robin lays it all out like that, it sounds intense. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe Sully can tell her. She’s not very good at reading people herself.  _

_ Sure enough: _

so sheeeee not only tried to fkin recreate something VERY near and dear to you, but she also put in all of her personal favorite things, what you meant to her before, and her phone number?

Yes.

and you’re not even a little curious

Curious about what?

… 

Wait. Wait, should I be?

robin khalil

_ Robin wipes tears from her eyes. She wishes that Sully would stop toying with her. _

lemme be blunt ok, the woman performed a labor of fucking love and ended it with a personal ask me out kit. ask her out

goddammit i dont even get that shit on my anniversary 

not that i ever knew i wanted it so you know what screw sumi for making me a romantic

_ Robin spends the entire time blinking. Her thoughts rebel against the idea. Logically, how could they not? Not only is Sumia just… like that as a person, to deal with Robin as a friend is already a commitment. No one would deal with Robin as a lover. Not even Sumia.  _

It’s easier to say that from a distance. I’m not sure how right your reads are. Like you said, she's just very kind. And everything I’ve heard and seen tells me that it’s typical for her. 

Besides, I think she’s already dating someone. 

youre gonna say cordelia and youre wrong by the way

_ Robin erases her text. _

Really?

i mean youre not crazy for thinking that

she has a boyfriend but shes so gay it hurts my soul

_ Robin hmms, thinking of Cordelia. How protective she was of Sumia. How distasteful on instinct that she seemed to find Robin, even when Sumia did not. She could only imagine the conversations the two had on her.  _

Putting that aside…

_ Robin thinks of where to go from there. She isn’t sure. So, again, she stops thinking.  _

I would like it. You know. If it was romantic. I just don’t know if I would be prepared. 

how come mama bird?

you can tell me if you wanna. 

It’s silly.

hmm... prob ain’t, promise

_ Robin smiles. Sully is… rough, but she’s pretty damn good at comforting. It prompts her to be honest. _

Sumia means a lot to me. That’s ultimately what it comes down to. And I have no real clue what kind of romantic I am or was. I’m already so much to deal with. I don’t want to drive her away.

_ She takes a breath after admitting that. Gods damn Sully for making her want to.  _

first off even if you think thats a lot to deal with (& it's not, we all have our struggles) she very clearly seems willing to deal with it

besides youd just be asking her out. not for her hand in marriage. for coffee or something.

you aint beholden to anything you dont wanna do

_ Robin holds a hand on her nose, another on her phone. Maybe Sully’s right. Maybe she’s overthinking things. Maybe she’s approaching it all wrong. Maybe not everything needs to be solved in one night. It’s just that she’s gone four years with such incremental progress that it would be really nice if it did.  _

that said you 100 should ask her out. 

she seems really sweet on you, think youre really sweet on her.

_ Robin thinks it through. Could she?  _

you dont gotta do anything you dont wanna do, but you can still not go that far and ask her out once

_ Either that makes a lot of sense, or Robin is a little too blinded by how badly she  _ wants  _ to ask her out, which means she probably should.  _

Okay then.

The two sit at the table that Robin picked out, near the action but around the corner. Usually, Sumia would be talking it up but she seems surprisingly shy now. Robin… well, internally, she’s feeling shy too, but externally doesn’t feel like she needs to be silent. She just doesn’t really lead the conversation. 

In an effort to help, Robin says “you don’t need to be shy.”

Sumia looks up. “Oh! I’m not trying to be!”

Robin also blanches. “Oh, oh totally, I hope I’m not being too pushy.”

Sumia raises her hands up. “You’re fine, you’re fine.” She punctuates this with a shaky giggle.

“I just am really not used to leading conversations.” Robin stops and decides to frame it in a positive way. “You’re really good at that.”

“Awwww!” Sumia beams and blushes at once. “I dunno, I just tend to talk a lot.”

“Whatever it is, it works.”

Sumia hides her face, but Robin can still see the blush. Eventually, she says “I don’t know why I’m so nervous, really! It’s basically like every other time we hang out, just not here.”

Robin frowns. “I hope not.” 

Sumia giggles for reasons Robin doubts even she knows. “Okay, not  _ basically _ .” Then: “Told you I was nervous!”

And yet still so charismatic. Robin’s impressed. 

“I’m a little nervous too,” she admits. Then, with a tiny grin: “That’s why I scheduled for the Sunday after the exam, so there would be something else I was more nervous over.”

Sumia snort-laughs. It’s a lot more authentic than her nervous giggle. “Yeah, no joke! I’ve never felt so carefree over a test, even if it was a comparison thing!”

Robin chuckles a little, but it’s sweeter. “Thanks again for rewriting my notes for me.”

“Thanks for writing them for me in the first place. You really didn’t have to.”

The two smile at each other. Robin doesn’t say that the exam made her nervous. Losing the original notepad shook her whole world up, and even trusting in Sumia, the idea of starting off fresh for the exam nerved her out, much less the stuff she didn’t know. Thank the Gods that Instructor Frederick was willing to take the time to work things out with her. She still isn’t sure why he’s dedicated to helping her. Maybe he wants her to fly again. 

Robin isn’t sure how much she wants to, but she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it. 

Sumia looks up, tapping her fingers on the table. She looks tender. “I still can’t believe you asked me.”

Robin snorts in an attempt to play it casually, even though she knows she’s blushing like mad. “You totally baited me.” She doesn’t address that Sully helped. “I think you wanted this.”

Sumia doesn’t answer. She looks every which way until she settles on Robin, loose smile on her face as shaky as her blush is permanent.

Robin lets herself acknowledge her own blush and relaxes at her own words.

“And I guess I did too.”

_ On a less specific note, she has… loose change, as she calls it. Memories not connected to everything. There’s that memory of the female friend, whoever she was, that got way more awkward when Robin casually brought up her own gayness. That, she knows is a memory. There’s a memory of her riding in a car somewhere in Ylisse, staring out the side window at empty fields to fight off carsickness. There’s one of her singing a song in a low register. She can’t remember if it was to a crowd, to someone else, to herself, but it makes her want to sing again. She remembers her birthdays and general birthdays and parties with no birthdays where she sat at the side and didn’t talk to anyone and accepted that no one wanted to talk to her.  _

_ “So my birthday’s coming up,” Sumia addresses. Both of them are eating lunch inside the cafe near the terrace that rain has soaked. Robin hmms to herself, feeling like Sully was onto something with Sumia hinting at things.  _

_ “Yeah,” Robin drawls. She doesn't have an idea as to what to get her. It’s hard to hit the sweet spot of “something she loves” and “something she doesn’t already have”.  _

_ “Do you know when your birthday is?” _

_ Robin has to think. She can’t remember that far back; her mother wasn’t a factor her entire life and her father never threw parties. She thinks Chrom and the others threw her one (and after the accident Chrom must have given her gifts before he deployed because she spontaneously found new things in her life) but for the life of her, she can’t remember when. Her final verdict is to shrug.  _

_ “That makes sense.” Still, Sumia shakes her head. “That’s sad, though.” _

_ Robin shrugs again, unsure if she doesn’t care or is pretending not to care. “I could probably just ask someone, I guess. It's probably in my medical history.” She thinks a little more. "They ask me what it is when I visit and I always recite something, but it's muscle memory, not…  _ memory  _ memory."  _

_ "But you can try and make a note of it when you go next, right?"  _

_ "Definitely." Robin's somewhere between puzzled and flattered that Sumia cares at all, but she errs on being flattered. _

_ Sumia’s face lights up a little, but not enough to comment on it. “I think the reason I brought it up was because I wanted to ask you something.” _

_ “You  _ think _ ?” Robin teases.  _

_ Sumia sputters but it turns into a giggle. “Stop it! Sometimes I just do things without planning and you’ve gotta get used to that.” _

_ “Duly noted.” Robin smiles. She can deal with that because the things Sumia does are generally interesting. Then a flash hits her face. “I realized you were gonna ask me something once upon a time.” _

_ Sumia seems as surprised by this as anyone. “Oh yeah! Okay, so, what I plan on doing this year is that my moms own a place in the countryside nearby.” She stops herself, thinking. “You totally don’t have to answer this, but do you have any country memories in your bank anywhere?” _

_ They are taking a hell of a path from A to B, but Robin doesn't mind. “Once I remember looking at the stars in the middle of nowhere,” Robin says too easily. “The grass was kind of light yellow. Blended into a wheat field. I can’t remember if I was supposed to be there or if I wandered off. That’s about all I got, though.” _

_ “Night skies in the country are amazing.” Sometimes Sumia seems like she’s dreaming while awake, but Robin rarely sees wheels turning in her head as she does so. She realizes she wants to stargaze with Sumia, but brushes that thought off as Sumia suddenly pops out of her daze. “Anyway, here’s the thing. My family’s gonna be there visiting for my birthday. A few of my friends are gonna be there too. Some of them, you used to know. They’ll probably know you too. I know Sully and Vaike won’t be there because of work, but Lissa will be there. Cordelia will be there, so I hope that’s not a problem. Maribelle will be there. Stahl will be there. And a few others that weren’t in that group. And I say that because I wanna see if you can go too.” _

_ Robin thinks it over slowly. That’s probably best because Sumia just dropped a lot on her. She immediately wants to RSVP, but also knows that it’s easily the most she’s done all year. Besides, she isn’t sure that she’ll be very interesting. Robin just thinks of the parties she’s attended in the past, a surprisingly potent memory that starts and ends at nothing. She’s not sure if she can be different. If she should bother. _

_ Still, there’s another person who takes priority in her mind. If she can’t do it for herself, she can do it for Sumia. _

_ “You should probably tell me more about it. Cause I do wanna go.” Robin swallows. Her heart is in her throat, beating at a thousand miles. She’ll either choke or explode, but the taste is surprisingly sweet. _

_ Sumia smiles. “I’m really glad!” Then it fades for a second. “You seem nervous, though. Everything okay?” _

_ Sumia has nearly finished her sandwich. Robin has not started her stir fry. Thinking takes all of her efforts sometimes. “I am a little,” she admits. “It’s a leap. But I can take it. I don’t mind.” _

_ Sumia smiles uneasily. “I hope not. I don’t wanna make you do anything that you don’t wanna do.”  _

_ “Even the tough things need doing sometimes. And I’ll do them.” Robin avoids the instinct of adding “For you” but the way Sumia looks at her, sometimes she thinks she  _ wants  _ her to say that. Maybe Sully was right. Sully would think so, at least.  _

_ Well, if Sully was right, Robin isn’t gonna let that go untested.  _

_ “I just want to ask a favor of you.”  _

_ Sumia looks up. “Oh, sure! Anything to help!” _

_ Robin smiles. Sumia would absolutely do anything to make things easier. Still, ever since Sully talked with her, Robin’s read Sumia’s little autobio at least once a day, trying to make the pieces of her plan fit together. It’s been a while since she’s made a good plan. She remembers that used to be a skill of hers she thought gone now.  _

_ Apparently, it’s not. _

_ Sumia always did love spending Sundays at a good coffee shop.  _

_ Robin takes a deep breath, hoping Sully was right on this. “Is there… is there a way that you’d like to do, do something else come... Sunday?” _

“You sure you wanna cover this? I can pay if I need to.” 

Robin doesn’t want to elaborate on where the money comes from. It still conflicts her as to whether or not she deserves it, and she rarely spends any of it on anything save medical bills. Not surprising that she doesn’t often buy herself things, even with money meant to help her restart. 

“I’m fine,” is all she says, a warm smile with a hint of let’s-not-press-it-further. Sumia notices with a subtle nod and takes another bite out of her croissant. She ordered that and a tall cider, and she thinks she’s putting Robin out. Never mind that Robin would buy half the store out for Sumia right now; Sumia is not a high-maintenance kind of girl. Maybe she should be more. She has the right to be; Robin herself is pretty challenging and sometimes Sumia seems like she’s trying to make it too easy for Robin to be her friend or anything more. 

Robin takes a sip out of her own cider (having reasoned that if Sumia liked it, she would as well. They both were right.) “It’s for your birthday,” she says. “If you bought anything for it, I think I did something wrong.”

Sumia frowns. “My birthday’s in a week.”

“Same difference,” Robin decides. Sumia chuckles a little but still seems embarrassed. She catches this, probably because she is overcompensating at dialing into Sumia’s emotions. “Seriously, Sumia. Let someone do something nice for you every once in a while. Especially for your birthday.” Before Sumia can respond: “This is definitely technically for your birthday, let’s get that straight.”

Sumia smiles sadly, taking a nibble out of her croissant. “I really appreciate this. You’re sure you’re up to next week?”

Robin wipes her mouth, unsure of how to respond to that. “I am… I think?” she muses. “I definitely wanna go. I definitely  _ will  _ go. I just… am out of practice at social events and that won’t change until I go to more of them like these. So I might be a little boring. So that’s part of why I wanted to ask you if you wanted to do this.”

Sumia’s doing that whole visible thinking thing again, face a little downcast. Robin does her best to smile accommodatingly, but she raises an eyebrow in the process and feels like a dork. Sumia giggles a little, but her face is as pale as a sail in a blizzard. “Can I ask you something… that might be a little…” 

Sumia struggles to find a word to end with and Robin feels like it will be disparaging to herself, so she says “Go ahead.”

“Did you, like… take me here just as a birthday thing?” Sumia shrinks down a little after she asks it like the response will take form from Robin and slap her. 

Robin shakes her head. That was easy. “No, that’s not the case. I just… got nervous a little.” With a gleam in her eye: “Also, from what I know about you, I think this is the only way you’d allow yourself to be pampered a little.”

Sumia bursts into giggles, but Robin swears there’s a tear in her eye. “I mean, you’re not wrong there! I guess… ah.” She relaxes in her chair a little. “I guess I just got worried. I haven’t been on a real date in ages.” 

“Oh, see, I didn’t know that.” Then again, Robin also thought that Sumia was dating her best friend, so there’s a lot she doesn’t know. 

“I get some on dating apps and what have you,” she says. “But they’re clearly just for a day out every now and again. A way to pass the Sundays. So I guess that all this… it feels a little stronger.”

Robin smiles. “That’s good. I’d like to do this again sometime, Sumia. It’s…” Robin struggles to word this, not for lack of option but an overflow. There are a million things that she can say about Sumia right now, hair down, clothes freer, tears in her eyes because someone is showing her a quarter of the kindness that she doesn’t know how that that she absolutely deserves. 

“There’s never been a moment I’ve spent with you that I regret.” 

Sumia gasps, hand over mouth. “Do you mean that?”

Robin thinks of what little she knows of the past, unfolding as Sumia reminds her of it. She thinks of this timeline. Then she thinks of this moment right now. 

There’s not a moment that hasn’t been worthwhile to her.

The last, most stripped-down part of her memories are feelings. Sights or sounds or sensations that just feel right. She barely remembers the big ones that she should, but things like the scent of pine needles in a forest, the sound of the bus whining its way to high school, the crisp feeling of nighttime air, and how it woke her up. 

There are concepts that she wishes she felt more often in the depths of her mind- physical touch, a kiss, and, well, things less clean. Things she shouldn’t be as embarrassed about wanting were it not for a cross between one of her only solid past foundations being her father and a current one being an abrupt revirginization that the devout and careless could only dream of. 

It was always her father and her church that made her feel ashamed of what she wanted. Of how badly she just wanted to be alive. Of how badly she just wanted to be okay with herself. Yet her father is dead, and the church is gone. The fact that their talons are still stuck in her flesh is… hard, but even though they pull her back in, she always finds a way to inch out.

She fears forgetting the afternoon. She fears forgetting what she said and hopes that Sumia won’t. She’ll use Sumia as an anchor when things get choppy, a map when she’s lost in the wilderness of her mind. Maybe if she forgets, Sumia will help remind her without having to try at all. 

She won’t forget how Sumia’s lips feel caressing her own like too much time has passed her by. They’re soft and kind, like Sumia herself, with a little bit of a pleading edge that makes her eyes light up and steers the blood from her brain even now. Robin remembers leaning into it, fully committed to going wherever Sumia led her, hissing a little moan into the space between Sumia's lips. It was an embarrassing accident, but Sumia giggled and held her tighter, so it wasn't for nothing, at least. 

She remembers being a little disappointed that it ended, but her mind brought the feeling back to her as soon as Sumia wished her goodnight. Now here she is, eyes closed, hand on her collarbone like Sumia’s thumb was, provoking a sense of pleasant, hot-blooded panic as she held the back of her neck. She remembers the way that she was kissed like this was Sumia’s only shot and she was determined not to waste it. Robin would kiss her forever. 

Robin fears forgetting the specifics that led to that moment. The whole date might pass in and out of her banks. The moment of silent permission that she gave, like when Sumia leaned against her (another feeling Robin couldn’t forget). The sensations of the kiss, the validation of her own gayness… she will never forget that. 

If she ever gets too lost, maybe she’ll find Sumia there. 


End file.
